Christian social reform. ; program outlined by its pioneer, William Emmanuel, baron von Ketteler, bishop of Mainz

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Christian Social Reform

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BARON WIHL. EMMANUEL von KETTELER
BISHOP OF MAYENCE

FROM A PAINTING BV PROF. NOACK, MADE SHORTLY AFTER
HIS ELECTION AS BISHOP.

( Courtesy of Petrus-Verlag Trier.

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Program outlined by its Pioneer

William Emmanuel Baron Von Ketteler

Bishop of Mainz

By George Metlake ^(p^CAAdJ

Preface by

HIS EMINENCE CARDINAL O'CONNELL

Archbishop of Boston

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Zbe ©olpbin Prcöß

1923

PREFACE.

THE whole life of Baron Von Ketteier, the
energetic and intrepid Bishop of Mainz, is a
Story of absorbing interest. It is the record of a
modern apostle who wrought miracles by faith and
action. He was a Christian bishop who believed
in the divine power and mission of the episcopate;
and, aflame with the conviction that he was sent,
he went forth and never rested until what he had
to do was done.

He was the pioneer of Christian social reform.
Leo XIII did not disdain to call him his great pre-
decessor, and framed his famous encyclical on
Labor along the lines of Von Ketteler's program
of action.

He realized, as no other man of his day, that in
the new order of conditions the Church must not
only act, but lead in social action, or lose. He
stood alone for years; but he could well stand
alone. Later on he moved his world simply by
Standing firm. He was a living proof of what
one resolute mind can accomplish in the face of
enormous difficulties.

A hostile government, a populär pagan System
of social action, the inertia of the many, the ex-
cessive haste of some — these were a few of his
obstacles. But he triumphed over all of them, and
transformed Westphalia and the Rhine provinces
into a model Catholic Organization for the whole
world to Imitate.

(iii)

iv FR E FACE

He was a true Catholic bishop. He based all bis
social principles upon Catholic doctrine. St.
Thomas was bis guide in the working-out of bis
practical method of social reform. He loved bis
Germany — he gave bis life for her order and
her prosperity, moral and social. And he loved
Rome with an entbusiasm which was youtbful until
deatb.

We are face to face to-day with the conditions
which he met and set in order. Wbat he did we
must now strive to do. His lifework, simply and
tellingh' told, may well serve as an Inspiration
and a guide to all who love the Church and our
country.

Leo found in Von Ketteler's discourses food for
lofty consideration. And Pius X bas placed a lov-
ing tribute upon bis bonored tomb. What greater
glory could he have than tbis? Germany and the
whole World may well preserve in eternal memory
and grateful recognition the words and works of
one of the very greatest men of our age, Bishop
Von Ketteier.

William Cardinal O'Connell,

Archhishop of Boston.

CONTENTS

FACE

Preface iii

BiBLIOGRAPHY I

Introduction 3

I. Lawyer AND Theologian, 1811-1844 7

II. CURATE AND PaSTOR, 1844-1849 I3

III. In THE National Parliament, 1848 19

IV. At THE First Catholic Congress, 1848 25

V. Social Questions of the Day, 1848 30

VI. Provost AT St. Hedwig's in Berlin, 1849-1850 . 57
VII. Ketteler's Episcopal Consecration. His Vow

OF Poverty, 1850 70

VIII. The Social Reformer on the Episcopal Throne,

1850-1877 'jd

IX. Liberty, Authority, and the Church, 1862 ... 87
X. Christianity and the Labor Question, 1864:

1. LIBERAL AND RADICAL ATTEMPTS TO SOLVE THE

LABOR QUESTION 97

2. CRITIQUE OF THE LIBERAL AND RADICAL SOLU-

TIONS OF THE LABOR QUESTION ..... • . . IO7

3. THE TRUE KEY TO THE LABOR PROBLEM II7

4. COOPERATION OF THE CHURCH IN THE SOLUTION OF

THE LABOR PROBLEM I24

XI. GeRMANY AFTER THE WaR OF 1866 I46

XII. A Christian Labor Catechism, 1869 157

XIII. The German Bishops and the Social Question.
Social Program for the Clergy. 1869:

1. DOES the social QUESTION CONCERN GERMANY? I76

2. CAN AND SHOULD THE CHURCH HELP TO SOLVE

THE SOCIAL QUESTION ? 177

PAGE

3. VVHAT REMEDIES CAN BE APPLIED ? I79

4. HOW CAN THE CHURCH PROMOTE ASSOCIATIONS

AND INSTITUTIONS FOS WORKPEOPLE ? . . . . 181

XIV. At THE Vatican Council and in the Reich-
stag, 1868-1871 185

XV. LiBERALISM, SOCIALISM AND ChRISTIANITY, 187I , I94

XVI. Ketteler's Socio-Political Program, 1873 . . 203
XVII. The Kulturkampf. The Social Virtues and

the Divine Law of Labor, 1873-1877 216

XVIII. The Christian Workman and the Socialistic

LABOR PARTY, 1877 220

LAST VISIT TO ROME AND DEATH, 1877 233

XIX. "The Great Preacher, though Dead, still

Speaks" 241

BISHOP KETTELER AND THE CHRISTIAN SOCIAL
REFORM MOVEMENT.

BiBLIOGRAPHY.

A. KETTELER S WORKS ON THE SOCIAL QUESTION

Soziale Predigten. Ed. Raich. Mainz, 1878

Arbeiterfrage und Christentum. Fourth edition,
with an Introduction by Windthorst. Mainz,
1890. (French Transl. Liege, 1869.)

Die Katholiken im deutschen Reiche. Fifth edi-
tion. Mainz, 1873.

Die Arbeiterbewegung und ihr Streben im Ver-
hältniss zu Religion und Sittlichkeit. Fourth
ed. Mainz, 1869.

Referate über die soziale Frage für die Fuldaer
Conferenz. 1869. (Italian Transl. Venice,
1870.) (French Transl. in Goyau's Ketteier.)

Liberalismus, Sozialismus und Christentuju. Third
edition. Mainz, 1871.

Kann ein katholischer Arbeiter Mitglied der so-
zialistischen Arbeiterpartei sein? 1877. (Pub-
lished in Pfülf's Life of Ketteier, Mainz, 1899.)

Religion, Sittlichkeit und Volkswohlfahrt. Ueber
die christliche Arbeit. Two Pastoral Letters,
1876-77.

B. OTHER WRITINGS OF KETTELER QUOTED IN THE PRES-

ENT WORK

Freiheit, Autorität und Kirche. Seventh edition.
Mainz, 1862. (Transl. into French, Magyar,
Spanish, and Bohemian.)

2 BISHOP KETTELER.

Kann ein gläubiger Christ Freimaurer sein?

Fifth edition. Mainz, 1865.
Deutschland nach dem Kriege von 1866. Sixth

ed. Mainz, 1867. (French Translation, 1869.)
Die Centrums fraction auf dem ersten Deutschen

Reichstag. Third edition. Mainz, 1872.
Briefe von und an W. E. Freiherr v. Ketteier.

Mainz, 1879.
Hirtenbriefe. Mainz, 1904.

C. WORKS ON KETTELER

Pfülf, Otto, S.J. Bischof von Ketteier. Eine

geschichtliche Darstellung. 3 volumes. Mainz:

Kirchheim. 1899.
Goyau, Georges. Ketteier, W. E. in La Pensee

Chretienne series. Paris, 1908. Also article on

Ketteier in Catholic Encyclopedia.
De Girard. Ketteier et la Question Ouvrihe.

Avec une introduction sur le mouvement social

catholique. Berne, 1896.
Decurtins, Gaspar. CEuvres Choisies de Mgr.

Ketteier. Basle, 1892.
Kannengieser. Ketteier et l' Organisation sociale

en Allemagne. Paris, 1894.
Liesen, Bernard. Ketteier und die Soziale Frage.

Frankf. 1888.
Greiffenrath, Dr. Ketteier und die deutsche So-
zialreform. Frankfort, 1893.
Wenzel, Johannes. Arbeit er schütz und Zentrum.

Berlin, 1893.
Mumbauer, Johannes. Wilhelm Emmanuel von

Ketteier' s Schriften. 3 volumes. Kempten, 1911.

INTRODUCTION.

OLD chroniclers relate that in the year 1184
Frederic Barbarossa, the heroic Hohenstaufen
so famous in song and story, gave a great feast in the
" Golden City " on the Rhine, at which forty thou-
sand knights from far and near appeared to do him
homage. Seven hundred and twenty-seven years
went by, and another great feast was held in Golden
Mainz, and from north and south and east and west
of the new German Empire and from far beyond
its borders fifty-two thousand " knights of labor "
came to do homage, not to earthly liege, but to
Christ the King, and to honor the memory of the
Catholic labor apostle of the nineteenth Century, to
celebrate the one hundredth birthday of Wilhelm
Emmanuel von Ketteier. The Fifty-eighth Katho-
likentag, of which this splendid workingmen's
parade was the prelude, was Catholic Germany's
tribute to one of her greatest sons, a mighty echo of
the popularity which he enjoyed during his lifetime.
The record of what Bishop von Ketteier did for
his own diocese and for the Church at large, the
great debt of gratitude Germany owes to him as the
renewer of religious life, as the pioneer of the Cath-
olic social reform movement and its scientific ex-
ponent, as the champion of the religious and politi-
cal rights of the Catholics, is written in indelible
letters on the pages of history and in the hearts of
his countrymen. His sublime personality, his emi-
nent virtues, his lovable traits of character were the

4 BISHOP KETTELER.

admiration of his contemporaries and deserve to be
held up for the imitation of all succeeding genera-
tions. " He was for the nineteenth Century," says
M. Decurtins, " what an Athanasius, a Basil, and
an Ambrose were for their troubled times." ^

In dark and lowering days he grasped the pas-
toral staff of St. Boniface with a firm hand and led
out his sheep and went before them and showed
them good pasture and stood between them and the
wolves lying in wait to catch and to scatter. He
stood on the watch-tower, and when he saw the
enemy approach he sounded the alarm, rallied the
Catholic forces and took his place in the forefront
of the battle-line to hurl back the invaders.

No statues in marble or bronze were raised to
him during the year of jubilee, but more fitting me-
morials, memorials which this Sterling friend of
the poor, the suffering, the workingmen, and the
children will look down upon with favor and bless
from his throne of glory. A church consecrated
to the Sacred Heart was erected in the working-
men's colony of Mainz ; the shrine of Our Lady of
Sorrows in Dieburg, where Ketteier preached so
often and prayed so much, was completely reno-
vated; and a Ketteier Society was founded to raise
funds for the erection of a free Sanatorium for poor
children in Bad Nauheim.

It is the purpose of the following sketch to treat
of Ketteier, not as the champion of the liberty of
the Church and the religious reformer, but first and
foremost of Ketteier the social reformer, of whom

1 Ketteier, p. xxxi.

SOCIAL REFORM. 5

the great " social Pope," Leo XIII, said : " He was
my great predecessor !" ^

" Verba movent ; exempla trahunt." Ketteier
was well aware of the profound wisdom underlying
this old adage. He knew that reform, like charity,
must begin at home. Unlike Lassalle and a host
of other theorizing Socialists, he preached what he
practised and practised what he preached. There
was no need in his case to admonish the people to
follow his good doctrine, not his bad example.

The life-story of a man like Ketteier is the best
answer to the oft-repeated boast of the Socialists
that they are the only ones who have stood by the
poor man and the laborer, and to the taunts hurled
by Bebel and Liebknecht at the members of the Ger-
man Reichstag, 31 May, 1881, during the debate on
the Accident Insurance Bill: " When did you begin
to take notice of the workingman? When did you
begin to study the Social Question? Not until the
Socialists reminded you of your duty."

Ketteler's sociological writings, above all his
Grosse Socialen Fragen der Gegenwart and Arbei-
terfrage und das Christentum, are acknowledged
classics in this category of literature. They gave
the first Impulse to the Christian social reform
movement, and exerted a far-reaching influence not
only on the social reform legislation in Germany,
but also on the famous Labor Encyclical of Leo
XIII — Rerum Novarum, of 15 May, 1891. No less
an authority than Windthorst ^ pronounced them
to be the best exposition of the Christian point of

2 To the Swiss Catholic sociologist, M. Gasp. Decurtins.

^ Introduction to the 4th edition of Arbeiter/r. und Christeni.

6 BISHOP KETTELER.

view on the social question and the clearest pres-
entation of the defects and the one-sidedness of
the naturalistic position.

French and Swiss writers have long since taken
up the study of Ketteier. During the last decade
of the last Century, Decurtins, Kannengieser,
Girard, translated the most important of his works
or analyzed his economic doctrines; in 1903 Lionnet
wrote an interesting sketch of his life, based on
Father Pfülf's monumental work; some years later
Rene Lebegue made the sociological ideas of Ket-
teier the subject of an academic dissertation, and in
1908 the versatile Georges Goyau contributed an
excellent volume on Ketteier to the collection of
La Pensee Chretienne. If there are any English
works dealing directly with Ketteier, I confess that
I have not been able to trace them.

w

CHAPTER I.

LaWYER AND ThEOLOGIAN. 181I-I844.

ILHELM EMMANUEL VON KETTELER

sprang from an ancient Westphalian race.
His pedigree can be traced back to the thirteenth
Century. A Ketteier was the first duke of Cour-
land and Semgallen, and another Ketteier, who
died in 1711, was the husband of Anna Iwanowna,
who ascended the Russian throne in 1730.

Born at Münster, on Christmas Day, 181 1, Wil-
helm Emmanuel ^ inherited more than a baron's
title and rank: ardent love of the Catholic Church,
noble independence of mind, deep manly piety —
traits for which his ancestors were ever distin-
guished — these were the better portion of his
heritage.

Carlyle speaks somewhere of the " all-but omnip-
otence of early culture and nurture ". The influ-
ences surrounding Ketteler's early life were cer-
tainly calculated to prepare him for the great work
cut out for him by Providence. Brought up in
the most beautiful family life, under the eyes of a
father who was every inch a nobleman, of a mother
who was filled with inexhaustible love and solici-
tude for the Christian training of her children, sur-
rounded by respectful and respected domestics
whose years of Service were as a rule measured by

^ The name Emmanuel was given him in honor of the auspicious
day of his birth.

8 BISHOP KETTELER.

their span of earthly life, early familiär with the
life of the independent yeoman, the industrious
tenant, and the humble craftsman of his own
Münsterland, as well as the very different conditions
prevailing in the mines and the factories on the
banks of the Ruhr — knowledge and experience
broadened and intensified by study, travel, and in-
tercourse with all classes and conditions of men —
Ketteier early laid the foundations on which his
career was built."

After a four-year course in the Jesuit College at
Brieg (Switzerland), Ketteier was graduated from
the Gymnasium of Münster with high honors, and
studied law at Göttingen, ^ Berlin, Heidelberg, and
Munich. At Göttingen his volcanic temper in-
volved him in a number of student duels, one of
which cost him the tip of his nose and two weeks'
career. The parents of the dueller took the aflfair
very much to heart. Ketteier himself thought it
did not matter much whether his nose was a little
shorter or a little longer; but his father was not of
the same opinion and forbade his son to appear be-
fore him until such time as his nose should have re-
gained its normal proportions, which necessitated a
long and troublesome eure in Berlin.

The reader may be surprised that a young man
with a Christian home and College training like
Ketteler's should have taken to the very unchristian
practice of dueling during his university course,

2 On the influences surrounding Ketteler's childhood and youth
see Liesen's Ketteier und die Soziale Frage.

^ Windthorst was also at Göttingen at the time, but Ketteier
formed only a passing acquaintance with him.

SOCIAL REFORM.

But it must be remembered that in those days Stu-
dent duels with rapiers or broadswords were fought
by Catholic students without the least scruple. The
ecclesiastical prohibitions were either not known
or mildly interpreted, and very few indeed saw in
such " little affairs of honor," which seldom took a
very dangerous turn, a violation of the Natural
Law. August Windthorst, a cousin of the great
Centrist leader, inscribed a lasting memorial of his
" left-handed dexterity " on Bismarck's right cheek,
and Hermann von Mallinckrodt was looked upon as
the most skilful swordsman the university of Bonn
had seen for many years. In later years these men
became outspoken opponents of dueling both in the
army and in the universities.

In spite of the manifold temptations besetting the
highways and by-ways of German university life,
the young Westphalian nobleman, on his own con-
fession, never committed an action calculated to
sully in any way his family escutcheon. " I was not
an over-zealous Catholic, but I always had the high-
est regard for our holy religion, and those who re-
viled or sneered at it I hated from the depths of
my soul. I was a gay Student, but God preserved
me from everything of which I should have been
ashamed before the world." The prayers of his
saintly mother and the example of his high-souled
sister no doubt helped him safely through his period
of storm and stress. To the memory of these his
two good angels he paid a beautiful tribute in after
years. " The greatest blessing," he said in one of
his sermons on the Great Social Qtiestions of the
Day, " that God can confer on man in the natural

lO BISHOP KETTELER.

Order is without doubt the gift of a truly Christian
mother. I do not say the gift of a tender, loving
mother, because, if the mother is filled with the
spirit of the world, her love is not a boon but a bane
to her child. But a Christian mother is of all divine
gifts the greatest. . . . When such a mother has
long been laid to rest and her son is seized by the
storm-winds of life and, tossed about hither and
thither, is on the verge of losing both faith and
virtue, her noble, saint-like form will appear to him
and gently yet forcibly draw him back to the path
of duty. He who has learned to know Christianity
and its virtues, its inner truth, its purity, its self-
oblivious love in the life of a Christian mother or of
her counterpart, a Christian sister; he who has
tasted peace, the peace which Christ calls His peace,
in the bosom of such a family — the thought of it
will pluck him out of every pool of perdition into
which life may hurl him. He who has once seen
virtue in such transfigured Images cannot look on
vice, even though he be caught in its toils, except
with aversion and contempt." *

At the end of his university course Ketteier en-
tered the Service of the State as referendary at the
Superior Court of Münster. His marked ability
and his scrupulous attention to his work gained him
the good will of his superiors. An honorable career
was open to him ; but he was not happy in his chosen
field. There was a void in his heart which the
routine of his daily life was by no means calculated
to fill. He feit that something extraordinary must
happen to change the course of his life.

* Predigten, II, pp. 199-201.

SOCIAL REFORM. U

Something extraordinary did happen, something
the young lawyer had hardly looked for. On the
twentieth of November, 1837, the Prussian Govern-
ment ordered the arrest of the aged Archbishop of
Cologne, Klemens August von D roste- Vischering,
ostensibly for having plotted against the State, in
reality for refusing to break his oath of fealty to
the Church by handing over the children of mixed
marriages to Protestantism.

This so-called Cologne Event {Kölner Ereignis)
made a deep impression on Ketteier. He had not
buried his chivalry and his love of Holy Church in
law books nor bartered his independence of mind
for Government favor. When his kinsman Fer-
dinand von Galen was dismissed from his diplomatic
post in Brüssels for declining to make official com-
munication of the false charges against the im-
prisoned Archbishop to the Belgian Court, he
handed in his resignation, having become convinced
that he could not serve a Government that de-
manded the sacrifice of his conscience.^ " One
must have a very good stomach," he wrote at the
time, " to digest the bile stirred up by such infam-
ous acts."

The name and fame of the great Görres drew
Ketteier to Munich, whither his brother Richard,
who had exchanged a cavalry officer's uniform for
the Soutane of a seminarian, had preceded him.
Here he spent the spring and summer of 1839,
dividing his time between serious reading, the rare
pleasures of intimate intercourse with the famous
Catholic leaders, Görres, Windischmann, and

5 Briefe, p. 8.

12 BISHOP KETTELER.

Phillips, and invigorating hunting expeditions into
the Bavarian and Tyrolese Alps. But he did not
find what he had come to seek — certainty as to his
vocation. This he owed, after God and the Blessed
Virgin of Altötting, to Dr. Reisach, then Bishop of
Eichstätt and afterward Cardinal. In 1841 he took
up the study of theology at Munich. Before pro-
ceeding to the university he made a retreat at the
Jesuit College in Innsbruck. These days of earnest
introspection and communion with God were de-
cisive for his whole future. He made a complete
sacrifice of himself, vowing to place his talents, his
fortune, his influence, at the service of Christ and
His persecuted Spouse.® From Munich he passed
to the clerical seminary of Münster, where he was
ordained i June, 1844. His first appointment was
to a curacy in the little town of Beckum.

^ Erste Exercitien des seligen Bischofs von Mainz. Von ihm
selbst aufgezeichnet und herausgegeben von Dr. J. B. Heinrich,
Mainz, 1877.

CHAPTER II.

CURATE AND PaSTOR. 1 844- 1 849.

WHEN Ketteier was still engaged in his uncon-
genial duties as Government referendary —
"much paper and little heart," was his not altogether
inappropriate description of Government business —
he told a friend that his ideal in life was to be
placed in a position in which he would be enabled
to work for the moral and social uplift of the com-
mon people. His dream was now realized. Beckum
afforded him numberless opportunities of exercising
not only spiritual but also corporal works of mercy,
and he was not the man to let slip even one.

The following incident gives us a glimpse of the
ardent charity which burned within him. With two
other priests, one of them the future confessor-
bishop of Münster, Johann Bernhard Brinkmann,
he occupied a little presbytery — Priesterhäuschen,
the people called it. One of his companions feil
seriously ill. Sisters of Charity and Brothers of
Mercy were a rarity at that time even in West-
phalia; but, although many months passed before
death released him from his pains, the sick man
never feit the want of a nurse. Ketteier tended him
as tenderly and carefully as any mother or sister
could have done. Bed-making and sick-nursing he
had, as he used to say, learned from his mother.

Ketteier was curate in Beckum for only two years,
but to this day his memory is in benediction amongst

14 BISHOP KETTELER.

the people, and the flourishing Hospital and Chil-
drens' Home in charge of the Clementine Sisters
are a lasting monument to his zeal in the Service of
the poor and at the same time his first contribution
toward the Solution of the social question. " We
had to beg for every rafter in the roof and for every
stone in the walls," he wrote in 1851/ He applied
to relatives and f riends at home and abroad. When
repulsed, which was rarely the case, he returned to
the Charge, remembering the parable of the Friend
and the Three Loaves. A kind-hearted but over-
cautious parish priest was so moved by his eloquent
appeal for the poor of Christ that he took him into
the church and out of a secret fire-and-robber-
proof vault brought forth two thousand dollars and
gave them to him as his contribution toward the
building-fund. One-sixth of the total building ex-
penses was borne by Ketteier himself. " In two
substantial buildings," he could write some yeara
after, " forty sick persons and all the poor children
of the district are cared for : a beggar-child is
something unheard of in Beckum." -

I cannot pass on without making reference to one
of the most winning traits in Ketteler's character —
his love of children. For the school children who
lived too far from Beckum to go home for dinner
he had a special recreation-room fitted out. There
they gathered around the warm stove on cold win-
ter days, the curate, like another Philip Neri, in
their midst, telling them stories, teaching and en-
couraging them.

1 Briefe, p. 227. 2 pf^if, j, p. 128.

SOCIAL REFORM.

IS

One day the curate met a little boy who was
weeping bitterly. He had been rudely repulsed by
a rieh farmer at whose door he had asked for a
piece of bread. Ketteier called straightway at the
inhospitable house. He was, of course, received
with every mark of respect and the best in the house
was set before him. But he simply asked for a
piece of bread and butter, and when he had received
it, Said : " You have honored me, because I am
your curate, because I am a baron; but the bread
and butter are for a poor child, for a guest who is
greater than I ; for ' what you do unto the least of
My brethren, you do unto Me '."

" Ever since I have been entrusted with the care
of children," he said in one of his famous discourses
on the Great Social Questions of the Day, " I have
given the most careful attention to such as had lain
under theheart of an unworthy mother." When
he came across " those unfortunate children who
had never known their father, perhaps not even
their mother, or had seen in her an image of re-
probation," he always took a very special interest
in them and, if possible, placed them in good Cath-
olic families. " H you have the little ones, you will
win over the big ones too," was one of his favorite
sayings, and as Bishop he was always troubled and
displeased whenever he heard of pastors who could
not gain the confidence and attachment of the chil-
dren. Every year in autumn, when the grapes were
ripe in the episcopal vineyard, the boys and girls of
the city orphan asylums were invited to the
Bishop's house and liberally treated to the luscious
fruit. There was not an orphan child in his diocese

l6 BISHOP KETTELER.

that did not look up to the Bishop as its second
father and friend.

One of Ketteler's favorite seminary dreams was
realized in 1846, when he was made pastor of Hop-
sten, a parish of some two thousand souls.
Throughout his whole life he regarded the lot of a
country parish priest as an ideal one. A letter
written 24 May, 1855, begins with the characteristic
words : " You know I am every inch a country pas-
tor (Bauern-Pastor) ."

It was by no means a sinecure on which the new
pastor entered. For a generation and more the
people of Hopsten had been like sheep without a
shepherd. The baptismal registers bore undeniable
testimony to the sad consequences of these years of
inefficient pastoral care. Materially his parishion-
ers were hardly better off. " The whole country-
side," Ketteier wrote immediately on his Installa-
tion, " is rieh in sand. The people are mostly poor
tenants." To add to the general misery the
drought of the summer of 1847 brought famine and
typhoid in its wake. In this hour of direst need the
pastor was the good angel of his flock. He went
in person to every well-to-do farmer and asked
him how much of his harvest he was ready to sacri-
fice for the famine-stricken, and from every trades-
man and wage-earner he begged an alms for his
poor. Many families otherwise not reckoned among
the poor were especially sorely straitened, as an ex-
cusable pride prevented them from making known
their condition. These the pastor visited under
Cover of darkness and ministered to their wants.
It is impossible to estimate even remotely how

SOCIAL REFORM. I^

much of his own and of his relatives' money Ket-
teier spent while the famine lasted. Wagonloads
of corn, bread, and potatoes arrived at regulär in-
tervals, and no one but the pastor knew who paid
the bills.

During the famine year Ketteler's sister, the
Countess of Merveldt, spent a few days with him at
Hopsten. After dinner he invariably invited her to
accompany him on his rounds through the parish.
The houses of the poor and the bed-ridden were the
points of interest to which he took her, and she,
with true Ketteier generosity, dispensed alms tili
her last penny was gone and she had to borrow
money from her brother to pay her way home.

Solicitude for the poor was a passion with Ket-
teier. " When I have nothing for the poor, I don't
go out," he remarked to his companion, after he
had roused a sleeping beggar in a Roman piazza
and given him an alms.^ He never turned a beggar
away unless he was certain that he was a notoriously
degenerate subject. But his benevolence was not
always proof even against such cases : "he chid their
wand' rings but relieved their pain." A disabled
Veteran of the Napoleonic wars counted as con-
fidently on the Bishop's annual subsidy as on his
State-pension — and he got it as regularly too.*

On 5 October, 1864, the Bauhütte, the leading
organ of the German Freemasons, published what
pretended to be a faithful report of a " thunder-
ing " sermon preached by Bishop Ketteier against
the " damned and accursed sect of Freemasons " be-

8 This incident happened on Ketteler's last visit to Rome, in 1877.
* Liesen, Ketteier und die Soziale Frage.

l8 BISHOP KETTELER.

fore an audience composed almost exclusively of
persons of the lower classes, boatmen, day-labor-
ers, and farmers, and closed with the disdainful
remark : " Perhaps the Bishop thinks that Free-
masonry is dependent for its membership on dock-
hands, day-laborers, and peasants. We aim higher
than that." Ketteler's reply was significant and to
the point: " In this respect the Catholic Church is
diametrically opposed to Freemasonry. We joy-
fully confess that every dock-hand, every day-la-
borer, every peasant is of as much moment to us as
any prince or king, and that we place human dignity
far above all class distinctions. We feel nothing
but inexpressible pity for those who esteem the
wealthy manufacturer higher than the poor farm-
hand." ^

' Ketteier, Kann ein gläubiger Christ Freimaurer sein? p. 95.

CHAPTER III.

In THE National Parliament. 1848.

THE eventful year of 1848 drew on apace. The
social and political tempest, which threatened
to overthrow even the last remnants of the old order,
snatched Ketteier from the quiet and seclusion of
the country and set him down in the very vortex
of public life. Though averse to all political strife,
so fervid a soldier of Christ, so true a lover of
liberty, could not well remain an inactive spectator
of the momentous struggle; nor could his Catholic
fellow-citizens well do without his energy and tal-
ents. After a spirited contest, he was elected to
represent the district of Tecklenburg in the National
Assembly at Frankfort. From this period begins
the third phase of his life.

" Only religious motives ", he wrote after the
elections, " could induce me to step out of my spirit-
ual calling for a season." ^ The platform on which
he was elected contained only one plank — liberty
for all, but also for the Catholic Church. At
Frankfort he seldom rose to speak at the sessions in
the Paulskirche, and at the meetings of the Catholic
Club he took part in the debates only when ques-
tions relating to the Church or the School were dis- /
cussed.

Ketteier had been at Frankfort for three months
without having attracted any particular attention,

^ Briefe, p. 157.

20 BISHOP KETTELER.

when, by accident, as it were, his name was sud-
denly heralded throughout the length and breadth
of Germany and far beyond its confines. On the
eighteenth of September the streets of Frankfort
were the scene of bloody encounters between the
revolutionaries and the Government troops. To-
ward nightfall two of the ablest and most aggres-
sive of the conservative deputies, Fürst Lichnowski
and General von Auerswald, as they were riding
out of the city in the direction of Bockenheim,
where the Regent of the Empire resided, were fol-j
lowed by a band of rioters. As the two deputies
were unarmed they took refuge in a nearby wood,
but were discovered by their pursuers, set upon,
and literally torn and slashed to pieces. Auerswald
died on the spot, but Lichnowski succumbed to his
wounds during the night, in the Holy Ghost Hospi-
tal. When Ketteier came to the Hospital next
morning at his usual hour to say Mass he was ap-
prised of the dastardly crime. The Impression it
made on him was deep and lasting. " I saw these
men," he said twenty years later in a sermon
preached in the Cathedral of Freiburg, " on the
evening before that terrible day in the füll bloom of
their manhood, and early in the morning of the
following day I found them lifeless, lying horribly
mutilated in their blood."

The funeral of the two murdered noblemen and
the other victims of the street riots took place 21
September, Ketteier having been selected to preach
the funeral oration in the cemetery. " It was a
remarkably impressive and thrilling discourse," the
Allgemeine Zeitung of Augsburg said in its report

SOCIAL REFORM. 21

of the obsequies. " It is to be printed and distri-
buted broadcast throughout the country." It was
this Speech, in fact, that revealed to August Reich-
ensperger Ketteler's greatness. " It was powerful;
it penetrated to the very marrow," he told his
brother Peter.^ Beside the open graves, facing the
Speaker and his jaws working with ill-suppressed
rage, stood Robert Blum, the radical deputy and
demagogue who was court-martialed and shot a
few weeks later in Vienna for fighting at the head
of the revolutionary mob.

The oration, which was published soon afterward
in Leipsic and is included in Ketteler's coUected
sermons, belongs indeed to the best that sacred elo-
quence has to show. " It is a classic model of psy-
chological disposition," says Pfülf. " It was not
studied, but feit." A few extracts will show that
Ketteier had carefully studied the signs of the
times, probed the ugly wounds of society to their
depths, and was not afraid to point out the remedies
to be applied if the wounds were ever to heal.

Who are the murderers of cur friends? Is it indeed
those who have riddled their bodies with bullets? No, it
is not they. It is the thoughts that bring forth good
and wicked deeds on earth — and the thoughts that have
brought forth these deeds are not the thoughts of our
people. My lot is cast with the people ; I know it in its
pains and in its sorrows. I have devoted my whole lif e
to the Service of the people, and the more I have learned
to know it, the more also I have learned to love it. No,
I repeat again, it is not our noble, honest German people
from whom this horrible deed has gone forth. The mur-

2 Pastor, August Reichensperger, I, p. 264.

22 BISHOP KETTELER.

derers are the men who sneer at Christ, Christianity and
the Church before the people ; who try to pluck the
blessed message of Redemption out of the hearts of the
people; who raise rebellion, revolution, to the dignity of
a principle; who teil the people that it is not their duty
to govem their passions, to subject their actions to the
higher law of virtue . . . the murderers are the men who
set themselves up as the lying idols of the people, in
Order that they may fall dowTi and adore them.

On all sides I hear the cry for universal peace — and
whose soul would not joyfuUy join in the cry? — and I
see men ever more and more divided against themselves,
the father against the son, the brother against the sister,
the f riend against the f riend ; I hear the cry for equality
among men, an equality which the message of salvation has
been teaching for thousands of years, and I see man striv-
ing fjantically to raise himself above his fellow-man; I
hear the beautiful, the sublime cry for brotherhood and
love, a cry borne down to us from Heaven, and I see
hatred and caliunny and lying running riot among men;
I hear the cry to hold out a helping band to our poor
suffering brother, — and who, so he has not plucked out
both his eyes, can deny that his need is great, and who,
that has not torn his heart out of his bosom, will not
join with all his soul in this cry for help? — and I see
avarice and covetousness increase, and pleasure-seeking
grow more and more. I see men who call themselves
" friends of the people " adding to the general distress,
undermining the love of work, and setting their poor
deluded brother at the pockets of his fellow-man, keep-
irig their own money-bags tight sealed the while ; I hear
the cry for liberty, and before me I see men murdered
for having dared to utter an independent word; I hear
the cry for humanity, and I see a brutality which fills
me with horror.

SOCIAL REFORM.

23

O yes, I believe in the truth of all those sublime ideas
that are stirring the world to its depths to-day; in my
opinion not one is too high for mankind ; I believe it is
the duty of man to realize them all, and I love the age in
which we live for its mighty wrestling for them, how-
ever far it is from attaining them. But there is only
one means of realizing these sublime ideals — return to
Him who brought them into the world, to the Son of
God, Jesus Christ. Christ proclaimed those very doc-
trines which men, who have turned their backs on Him
and deride Him, are now passing off as their own inven-
tions; but He not only preached them — He practised
them in His life, and showed us the only way to make
them part and parcel of our own lives. He is the Way,
the Truth, and the Life; outside of Him is error, and
lying, and death. Through Him mankind can do all
things, even the highest, the most ideal ; without Him it
can do nothing. With Him, in the Truth which He
taught, on the Way which He pointed out, we can make
a paradise of earth, we can wipe away the tears from
the eyes of our poor suffering brother, we can establish
the reign of love, of harmony and fraternity, of true
himianity; we can — I say it from the deepest conviction
of my soul — we can establish commimity of goods and
everlasting peace, and at the same time live under the
freest political institutions ; without Him we shall perish
disgracefully, miserably, the laughing-stock of succeed-
ing generations. This is the solemn truth that speaks to
US out of these graves; the history of the world bears it
out. May we take it to heart !

It was on the same fateful eighteenth of Septem-
ber, vi^hose evening hours, as Pfülf says, were pol-
luted by the massacre of Auerswald and Lich-
nowski, that Ketteier delivered his first parliamen-
tary speech in the Paulskirche. His inborn love of

24

BISHOP KETTELER.

J

liberty and abhorrence of absolutism and bureau-
cracy found energetic expression. The vexed
school question was under discus'sion and eight
Speakers were to be heard. The day was already
far advanced when Ketteier, who was last on the
list, arose to speak. He warned the State not to
banish religlon from the schools and pleaded elo-
quently for recognition of the rights of individua)
conscience in the matter of education. " The
State ", he said, amid the cheers of the assembly,
" may demand a certain amount of intellectual cul-
ture from every Citizen, and may insist that parents
procure this culture for their children. Beyond
this the State has no right to go ; it has no right to
determine at the outset what course the father is to
foUow in the education of his children. That would
be tyranny, that would be the most shameful abso-
lutism." ^

* Stimmen aus Maria Laach, Vol. 74.

CHAPTER IV.

At THE First Catholic Congress. 1848.

TWO weeks later the first of the now famous Ger-
man Catholic Congresses met in Mainz. The
mass-meeting of 4 October was destined to become
a landmark, not only in the history of the Katholi-
kentage, but also in the history of the Catholic
Church and of Catholic social reform work.
Twenty-three deputies had come over from Frank-
fort, among them Döllinger, August Reichen-
sperger, Beda Weber, Professor Sepp, and Ket-
teier, all men of weight and name, prominent alike
by their rank in life, their talents, and their zeal in
the defence of the liberties of the Church. Döl-
linger, whose Speech in August on the liberty of the
Church had been universally regarded as a master-
piece of logic, composition, and delivery, had been
selected by the Catholic parliamentarians to be their
spokesman. He was to report succinctly on the re-
sult of the Frankfort discussion in regard to Church
and school questions. The people of Mainz, how-
ever, would not hear of this arrangement and the
Committee of Speakers at length prevailed on a
number of deputies to speak at the mass-meeting,
unprepared as they were. Ketteier spoke on the
liberty of the Church, a subject ever uppermost in
his mind. He did not deny that the times cast
dismal shadows ; but there was no reason to despair.
" Liberty can indeed bring dreadful things, but it

26 BISHOP KETTELER.

also brings the highest goods of humanity

Religion has every reason to rejoice at liberty, for
under the banner of liberty it will develop all the
streng^h of its truth. . . . But just as religion needs
liberty, so also liberty needs religion ; if men do not
return to religion they cannot stand liberty. ..."

Here his discourse took a sudden, unexpected
turn. He opened up before the astonished gaze of
his hearers the outlook on a vast and practically
unexplored region — the social question. " The
Chairman has told you," he said, " how the Catholic
societies should fulfil the tasks they have set them-
selves to do. Allow me to suggest a task for the
immediate future, the task of religion in regard to
social conditions. The most difficult question,
which no legislation, no form of Government has
been able to solve, is the social question. The diffi-
culty, the vastness, the urgency of this question fills
me with the greatest joy. It is not indeed the dis-
tress, the wretchedness of my brothers — with whose
condition I sympathize, God knows, from the bot-
tom of my heart — ^that affords me this joy, but the
fact that it must now become evident which Church
bears within it the power of divine truth. The
world will see that to the Catholic Church is re-
served the definitive Solution of the social question;
for the State with all its legislative machinery has
not the power to solve it."

" The people are in sore distress," he continued.
" The starving laboring masses, whose ranks are
swelling from day to day, are raising their voices
in protest and demand. How can we prevent them
from hurling themselves upon society, whose vic-

SOCIAL REFORM.

2^

tims they call themselves or believe themselves to
be? Let us, I beseech you, show forth in our live^
the power of the Church by following in the foot-
steps of a St. Francis of Assisi, who gave away his
last garment in perfectly voluntary poverty.
Works of love are the most convincing arguments.
When men see that with us is the home of love, of
an active Christian love that is ever ready to aid
our suffering, needy brother, the truth of our faith
will also be recognized. May the Catholic societies,
in this respect also, show the world that the true
spirit of Jesus Christ is not dead on the earth." ^

The Impression made by Ketteler's earnest and
timely words was deep and permanent. The per-
sonal appearance of the Speaker had not a little to
do with this. "After Förster [the future prince-
bishop of Breslau]", Beda Weber, an eye-witness,
wrote at the time, " Freiherr von Ketteier rose to
speak, a tall, stalwart figure, with clean-cut features,
indicative of fearless, inflexible energy, paired with
the old-time Westphalian fidelity to God and
Church, to emperor and empire. In this resolute
mind the German nation in its entirety, in its his-
tory, in its Catholicism still lives on in the freshness
of youth. ... In the acquisitions of the March Re-
volution he sees the means of completing the dorne
of the German Church sooner and more magnifi-
cently than the dome of Cologne.^ Hence his
words Struck his hearers with such elemental force:
they heard only the echo of their own hearts.

^ Official Report, p. 51.

2 The Cathedral of Cologne was still unfinished when these
words were written.

28 BISHOP KETTELER.

When I think of Ketteier the orator, I always think
of him as of one who is every inch a man. ..."

In Frankfort Ketteier had laid the foundations
of his fame as an orator; in Mainz he became a
prophet. He was the first to draw the attention of
the Catholic world to the supreme importance of the
social question and to the only means of solving it.
Since this memorable fourth of October the social
question has formed one of the principal topics of
discussion at the Catholic Congresses, which have
become the rallying-point of all the Catholic socio-
logical work of Germany. If Ketteier had done
nothing eise, this fact would suffice to render his
name immortal.

A splendid banquet brought the first Katholiken-
tag to a close. The Pope, the German nation, the
German hierarchy were toasted amid loud acclama-
tion. A master-butcher's son arose and asked the
guests to drink to the health of the honest trades-
men of Germany ; a " democrat " f rom Treves arose
and pleaded for a remembrance of the people, —
" the people who are ready to die for liberty and
for the Holy Faith " ; last of all, Ketteier arose and
proposed three cheers for — the poor. He reminded
the banqueters of the many poor men and women of
the city debarred from joys like theirs. " God's
Providence doles out to the one more, to the other
less ; but only in order to give us the opportunity of
balancing the difference. Therefore I do not ask
you to empty a glass of wine to the health of the
poor: I invite you to work with heart and hand for
the welfare of the poor, to stand by poverty with
a helping hand." When three thundering Hochs

SOCIAL REFORM.

29

had been given in response to this unexpected toast,
Ketteier passed round his hat and in a few minutes
one hundred and twenty-five florins were collected
and put into the hands of the president of the St.
Vincent de Paul Society to be distributed among
the poor.

CHAPTER V.

The Social Questions of the Day. 1848.

WHEN Ketteier returned to Frankfort early in
November, after a month's vacation in the
midst of his beloved parishioners of Hopsten, he was
invited to preach a series of sermons in the Cathedral
of Mainz. To this invitation we owe the six magni-
ficent discourses on the Great Social Questions of the
Day. In a truly lapidary style and with the calm
clearness and precision characteristic of his mind,
Ketteier treated the fundamental questions of the
social Order according to the teachings of the Church
and her approved theologians, especially St.
Thomas. Two sermons were devoted to the Cath-
olic doctrine of the right of property, the third to
the liberty of man, the fourth to man's destiny, the
fifth to marriage and family life, the sixth to the
authority of the Church. The sermons, which were
published immediately after their delivery, made
an impression nothing short of sensational. After
the lapse of more than sixty years they read as if
they had been written in our own day. They have
not aged with time. " The voice of the preacher
rings in them still, strong as the cry of the lion in
the mountains."

A deputy from Frankfort who happened to be in
Mainz on 3 December, when Ketteier delivered his
second sermon on the right of property, gives the
following description of the impression produced :

SOCIAL REFORM. 3I

To my joy I found the people of Mainz, even in the
tavems, quite worked up over the sermon preached that
day in the Cathedral by Freiherr von Ketteier, West-
phalian deputy to the National Parliament, before a vast
conconrse of people. They were captivated to the last
man by the persuasive eloquence of the Speaker. He is a
living proof of what great things one resolute mind can
accomplish in the face of the greatest difficulties.^

At the third Catholic Congress of Mainz (1892)
the famous Swiss sociologist, Dr. Decurtins, drew
attention to the fact that, when in 1848 the Com-
munist Manifeste of the socialistic agitators Karl
Marx and Friedrich Engels was launched on the
World, " Ketteier was one of the few men who re-
cognized the füll significance of the social move-
ment then still in its infancy," and that to him be-
longs " the undying honor of having met the mani-
feste of the Communists with a programme of
Christian sociology that Stands unsurpassed to this
day." =«

In the very first sermon Ketteier calls the social
question " the most important question of the day ".
In the second sermon he dwells at some length on
this subject:

We cannot speak of our time, much less understand it,
without ever and anon Coming back upon our social con-
ditions, and especially on the cleft between those who
possess property and those who do not, on the condition
of our poor brethren, on the means of Coming to their
relief. One may attach never so much importance to

1 Hist. Polit. Blaetter, XXIII, p. 336.

* Official Report of the Cath. Congress of Mainz, 1892.

32

BISHOP KETTELER.

political questions, to the proper moulding of political
life, but the real difficulty of our Situation does not lie
in them. Even with the best form of government we
have not work, we have not clothing, we have not bread
and shelter for our poor. Nay, the nearer political
questions approach Solution, the more manifest will it
become that this has been the smallest part of our task,
the more imperiovisly will the social question step into
the foreground and clamor for Solution. . . . If there-
f ore we would understand the times in which we live, we
must try to fathom the social question. He who under-
stands it, xmderstands our tünes; to him who does not
understand it, both present and future are a puzzle. . . .
Whilst the leaders and seducers of the people aim only
at getting hold of the reins of Government, the poor
people themselves hope for a betterment of their material
lot. The masses still believe in the promises of their
leaders, believe that a new form of Government will free
Ihem f rom their present misery. But when once they are
convinced of their error, when once they see that neither
liberty of the press, nor the right of association, nor
populär assemblies, nor clever tums of speech, nor
populär sovereignty are able to f eed the hungry, to clothe
the naked, to comfort the sorrowful, to nurse the sick,
they will wreak vengeance on their seducers and in de-
spair Stretch out their hands to other anchors of rescue.'

As the social question is intimately bound up
with the question of private property, Ketteier pro-
ceeds to expose and defend the Catholic doctrine on
this important matter.

I propose to set f orth the Catholic doctrine on the right
of private property as St. Thomas developed it six hun-
dred years ago. Perhaps we shall find that centuries be-

^ Predigten, II, p. 133.

SOCIAL REFORM.

33

f ore OUT time the human mind, guided by faith, traced for
US ways which, devoid of faith and left to itself, it seeks
in vain to discover to-day.

In Order to give complete expression to the theory of
property, St. Thomas examines at the outset the relation
of God to His creatures. Let us foUow him in this
inquiry.

St. Thomas lays down the principle that all creatures,
and consequently all earthly goods, can, of their very
nature, belong only to God. This proposition is a neces-
sary corollary of the dogma that God drew forth all
things, excepting Himself alone, out of nothing. God
is therefore the true and sole proprietor of all things, and
this right of God, because so intimately connected with
the very existence of creatures, is inalienable, and no
division, no ownership, no custom, no law can restrict
this essential right of God — God possesses all rights, man
none. Besides this essential and complete right of owner-
ship, which can belong to God alone, St. Thomas re-
cognizes a usufructuary right, and only in regard to this
right of using and enjoying them does he concede to men
a right to the goods of earth. Hence, when men speak
of a natural right of ownership, there can be no ques-
tion of true and complete proprietorship, but only of a
usufructuary right. But from this it also foUows that
the usufructuary right itself can never be regarded as an
unltmited right, a right to do with terrestrial goods what
man pleases, but always and solely as a right to use these
goods as God wills and as He has ordained. In the use
of these goods man must recognize the order established
by God, and at no time has he the right to alienate them
from the purpose assigned to them by God. Now the
purpose of all earthly things is expressed with equal
cleamess in the very nature of the things themselves and
in the words addressed by God to the first of mankind
after creation : " Behold, I have given you every herb-

34

BISHOP KETTELER.

bearing seed upon the earth, and all trees that have in
themselves seed of their own kind, to be your meat." *

To God therefore belongs, to conclude with St.
Thomas's own words, the sovereign proprietorship over
all things. But in His Providence He has destined some
of these things for the sustenance of man, and for this
reason man also has a natural right of ownership, viz. the
right to use things. Two very important conclusions
follow from these premises.

In the first place, the Catholic doctrine of private
property has nothing in common with the conception
current in the world according to which man looks on
himself as the unrestricted master of his possessions.
The Church can never concede to man the right of using
at his pleasure the goods of this world, and when she
speaks of private property and protects it, she never loses
sight of the three essential and constituent elements of
her idea of property, viz. that the true and complete right
of property pertains to God alone, that man's right is
restricted to the usufnict, and that man is bomid, in re-
gard to this usufruct, to recognize the order established
by God.

Secondly, this doctrine of the right of property, having
its root and foundation in God, is possible only where
there is living faith in God. It is only since the men
who call themselves the friends of the people, although
they steadily compass its ruin, and their spiritual pro-
genitors have shaken mankind's faith in God, that the
Godless doctrine could gain ground which makes man
the god of his possessions. Separated from God, men
regarded themselves as the exclusive masters of their
possessions and looked on them only as a means of satis-
fying their ever-increasing love of pleasure; separated
from God, they set up sensual pleasures and the enjoy-
ment of life as the end of their existence, and worldly

* Gen. I : 29.

SOCIAL REFORM.

35

goods as the means of attaining this end ; and so of
necessity a gulf was f ormed between the rieh and the poor
such as the Christian world had not known tili then.
While the rieh man in his refined and pampered sensual-
ity dissipates and wastes his substance, he suffers the
poor man to languish for very lack of the barest neces-
saries of life and robs htm of what God intended for
the nourishment of all. A moimtain of injustice, like
a heavy malediction, rests on property thus abused and
diverted from its natural and supematural purpose. Not
the Catholic Church, but infidelity or atheism has
brought about this State of things, and just as they have
destroyed in the poor man the love of work, so are they
destroying in the rieh man the spirit of active charity.

The theory which we have been developing and which
follows as a necessary consequence from the relation of
God to His creatures, fumishes us with the real basis for
determining the true nature of the Christian conception
of property. Starting from this principle, let us advance
a Step farther. Man's right of ownership is, as we have
seen, nothing but a right conceded to hini by God to use
the goods of earth as the Creator has ordained. New
the will of God in this matter can be accomplished in >J^
two ways. Men can either exercise their property, or
rather usufructuary, rights in common, that is, admin-
ister the goods of earth in common and divide the profits
(Communism) ; or they can possess them divided, so that
each man has property rights over a specified portion
of them and is at liberty to dispose of the profits derived
from them.

Which of these two Systems is destined for man? St.
Thomas examines this question also and solves a problem
which was to agitate the world six hundred years after
him. Let us follow him step by step in his investigation.
In the usufructuary right which must be conceded to
man he distinguishes two things : first, the right of man-

36 BISHOP KETTELER.

agement and administration ; and, secondly, the right of
enjoying the profits. This division needs no justification.
In the State in which they are presented to us by natura,
the goods of earth cannot satisfy our wants. They
must be prepared by man for consumption.

In regard to the management and administration of
property, St. Thomas affirms that the individual right of
ownership over the goods of earth must be upheld, and
that for three reasons. In the first place, it is the only
way to secure good management, for every one takes
better care of what belongs to himself than of that which
he possesses jointly with others. Every one, he adds,
shuns work and only too readily leaves to others what
has been enjoined on all, as may be seen in a house in
which there are many servants. It is not difficult to see
the truth of this Observation. If all goods were man-
aged in common, or if a division took place at regularly
recurring periods of time, or even if the right of in-
heritance were suppressed, good administration would
be out of the question, improvement would be rendered
impossible, and a powerful incentive to new discoveries
would be removed. Each one would rely on the others,
and laziness, so natural to man, having lost its counter-
poise, would soon gain the upper band and bring about a
depreciation in the goods of the earth.

In the second place, says St. Thomas, the recognition
of the right of private property can alone guarantee the
Order required for f ruitf ul management ; for if each one
had to look out for all, general confusion would result.
This truth also is incontestable. There is an incredible
variety of human occupations all of which must find a
special place in a general Organization if all the wants
of human nature are to be satisfied. This Organization
cannot be disturbed without danger to the well-being of
humanity. Now, the essential element in this general
Organization of labor is precisely family property, de-

SOCIAL REFORM. ^7

termining as it does in a large measure the vocation of
the members of the family and preventing sudden fluctua-
tions, sudden transitions of great masses of men from
one kind of work to another. To what endless con-
fusion would labor be subjected if this powerful bond
of social Order were broken by continual divisions of
property !

Finally, says St. Thomas, private property alone can
preserve peace among men : for we know from experience
how easily Joint possession of property leads to disputes
and quarreis. This reason is as profound as it is true.
If under existing conditions brothers and sisters cannot
agree when the paternal inheritance is to be divided, and
if the inmates of one and the same house, who share
with each other nothing but the air they breathe and the
water they draw from the common well, fall out and
quarrel, what would become of hiunanity if a new dis-
tribution of property and labor took place every day?
Dissension and strife would be the order of the day.

Backed by these irrefragable arguments, St. Thomas
upholds the right of private property as far as the care
and management of goods is concerned, and thus Stands,
consonantly with the teaching of the Church and the
Commandment of God — " Thou shalt not steal " — irrec-
oncilably opposed to the Communism of our day. But
in regard to the enjoyment of the fruits derived from
the administration of earthly goods, St. Thomas lays
down a very different principle. Man, according to
him, should never look upon these fruits as his exclusive
property, but as the common property of all, and should
therefore be ready to share them with others in their
need. Hence the Apostle says : " Charge the rieh of this
World to give easily, to communicate to others." '

Thus, on the one hand, we see Christianity opposing
the falsa doctrines of Communism, and on the other no

^l Tim. 17:18; Summa Theolog., II, II, Q. 66, A. i & 2.

38

BISHOP KETTELER.

less strenuously combating the false doctrine of the right
of OMTiership, and setting up true Communism. God
created nature to nourish all men, and this end must be
attained. For this reason each one should put the fniits
of his property at the disposition of all, in order to con-
tribute, so far as in him lies, to the realization of this end.
We have now set forth to the best of our ability the
ideas of St. Thomas on the right of property, and we feit
justified in recognizing in them the doctrine of the
Catholic Church herseif.®

Ketteier then goes on to show how the Catholic
doctrine towers above the two contradictory and ir-
reconcilable theories on the right of property which
divide the world at present.

The false doctrine of the rigid right of ownership is
a continual sin against nature, because it sees no injustice
in using for the gratification of the most insatiable
avarice and the most extravagant sensuality what God
intended to be f ood and clothing for all men ; because
it kills the noblest sentiments in the himian heart and
engenders a callous disregard for the misery of others
such as is hardly to be found even in the brüte creation.
The notorious dictum, " property is robbery," '^ is some-
thing more than a mere lie ; besides a great lie, it con-
tains a terrible truth. Scorn and derision will not dis-
pose of it. We must destroy the truth that is in it, in
order that it may become all lie again. As long as it

' Predigten, II, pp. 120-127.

'' St. Basil, it seems, is the author of this phrase. In his
Constitutiones Monasticae, C. 34, I, he says in regard to private
property in a monastery : nloTvfi yäp 77 \6iä(;,ovaa KtijaiQ, " per-
sonal property is theft." Proudhon very likely took it from Jean
Pierre Brissot who wrote in 1780: "La propriete exclusive est
un vol dans sa nature." (Pfeiffer in Caritas, Vol. 16, no. 12,
P- 347-)

SOCIAL REFORM.

39

contains even a particle of truth, it has power to overtum
the whole order of the world. As deep calleth unto deep,
so one sin against natiire calls forth another. Out of the
distorted right of ownership the false doctrine of Com-
munism was begotten. Communism also is a sin against
nature, for, under pretence of philanthropy, it would
bring upon mankind the profoundest misery, destroy in-
dustry, order, and peace on earth, turn the hands of all
against all and thus sweep away the very conditions of
human existence.^

In radiant letters above both these false doctrines
Stands the true teaching of the Catholic Church. She
recognizes and makes her own wliat is true in each ; she
rejects what is false in both. She does not recognize in
man an unconditional right of ownership over the goods
of earth, but only the right to use them in the manner
ordained by God. She safeguards the right of owner-
ship by insisting that, in the interests of peace, order,
and industry, the division of goods as it has developed
among men must be acknowledged ; she sanctifies Com-
munism by making the fruits of property the common
property of all.

I cannot leave this subject without pointing out in
conclusion how harmoniously this conception of property
fits into a higher plan of God's Providence, and how in
this way all is unity and concord in the Divine order.
Man is placed on earth to do the will of God. With his
intellect he should make the thoughts of God his
thoughts ; with his will he should convert them into acts.
The thoughts and desires of man should correspond to
the prayer, " Thy will be done." But in order to give
man the dignity and merit of self-determination, God
gave him free-will, so that man acts himianly and his

^ This is a direct reply to the " Communistic Manifesto " of
Marx and Engels. Cf. Das Kommunistische Manifest. 6th Ger-
man edition, Berlin, 1896, p. 19.

40

BISHOP KETTELER.

acts have a moral value only if he does the work of
God on earth as a free, self-determining agent. God
Himself respects the liberty of man and He does not
care to take it away even if the creature uses it to his
own undoing.

Let US apply these principles to our doctrine of the
right of property. God created the earth with all it
brings forth in order that man might derive sustenance
from it. God could have attained this end by ordaining
a compulsory distribution of goods ; but that was not His
Intention. He wished to give füll play to man's self-
determination and free-will ; He wished to hand His
work over to man, to make a himian work of it, that man
by doing the work of God might become God-like. He
permitted inequality in the acquisition and administration
of goods, that man might become the dispenser of His
gifts to His fellow-man. Thus was man to be drawn
into the life of that love with which God provides for
US, and by distributing his goods with the same love with
which God intended them for all men, man was to share
in the nature of God, which is love. If in the distribu-
tion of the goods of earth nothing depended on man's
free-will, if all was compulsion, or if by police regula-
tions or State legislation men could be forced to work
for the welfare of their fellow-men, the most beauti-
ful fountain of the noblest feelings of mankind would
be dried up. For assuredly a life devoted to the works
of self-sacrificing mercy and charity is a divine life.
Consider the life of a Sister of Charity and teil me
whether there are not more courage, more beauty, and
love, in such a life than perhaps in the life of a whole
city. O that we should return to this life of love, and
embrace all who need us in this love ! Let us make the
World subject to us by the power of this love and bring
it back to the Gross from which it has turned away.
Then, and only then, shall we preserve the f aith ; for

SOCIAL REFORM. 4I

faith in Christ can exist only where the charity of Christ
is bound up with it. Let us overcome the world by
works of love and lead it back to Christ, to the Catholic
faith ! »

In the second sermon Ketteier continues the de-
velopment of the Christian theory of private prop-
erty and shows in the first place that it is a postulate
of right reason.

In Order to arrive at the knowledge of truth, God has
given US a twofold revelation, one natural, the other su-
pernatural. We arrive at natural truths by the exercise
of the natural powers of the soul, intellect and reason;
at supernatural truths by the humble acceptance of all
that He has told us through His ambassadors and by the
help of grace merited for us by Christ. As both these
revelations come from God, they cannot contradict one
another, but only confirm and Supplement one another.
If we apply these principles to the theory of property
which I have called the Christian theory, we can call it
with equal reason the natural law of property; for, even
if I have adduced in its support some words borrowed
from supernatural revelation, I confined myself never-
theless in its development to purely natural arguments.
Whoever admits the existence of God, the almighty Crea-
tor of heaven and earth, and admits furthermore that
nature is destined to nourish all men, must, if he wishes
to reason not merely like a Christian, but simply like a
human being, accept in its entirety the doctrine I have
expounded to you. But these truths are also amongst
those which we draw from natural revelation, from the
exercise of our reason ; for only the f ool says in his heart,
" There is no God !"

^Predigten, II, pp. 115 ff.

42

BISHOP KETTELER.

The preacher then goes on to inquire into the
cause of the errors on the right of property.

The two doctrines on the right of property which we
find in the world are not only crimes against Christianity,
but also against the natural law. A doctrine which
makes man the god of his possessions and gives him the
right to use for the gratification of his inordinate love
of pleasure the fruits of his property which he ought
to share with his poor brethren, is not only unchristian
but also unnatural. Equally unchristian and unnatural
is the doctrine of Communism which wants all the goods
of earth to be administered in common. . . .

I ask you, how is it possible for doctrines which so
manif estly contradict the most natural truths to arise and
to spread far and wide? How is it possible that on the
one band w-e see rieh men, in the face of the most ele-
mentary laws of nature and without a qualm of con-
science, wasting their substance riotously, while the poor
are starving and children degenerate? How is it pos-
sible for US to relish superfluities whilst our brothers
are in want of the barest necessaries of life? How is
it possible that our hearts do not break in the midst
of revelry and song when we think of the poor sick who in
the heat of the fever are stretching out their hands for
ref reshment and no one is by to give it them ? How is it
possible that we can go through the streets of our cities
with joy in our hearts, when at every step we meet poor
children, himian beings, Images of God like ourselves,
who grow up in the deepest moral and physical degrada-
tion — in their birth, in their youth, in their old age, the
victims of the most heinous passions? How is it pos-
sible for men to become so inhuman? And, on the other
hand, how is it possible that the poor and their Godless
seducers, contrary to all natural right and all common
sense, embrace the absurd theory of false Communism,

SOCIAL REFORM.

43

and look to it for salvation, though it is so evident that
it would drag all humanity down to its ruin?

To these questions there is only one answer : it is con-
tained in that doctrine of Christianity of which a pro-
found Christian thinker says that it is incomprehensible
to reason, but at the same time so necessarily tnie that,
if man refuses to accept it, he must ever remain a mystery
to himself, viz. in the doctrine of original sin and its
transmission to the whole human race.^° . . . The doc-
trine of original sin alone can throw the light of truth
on our present Situation. According to this doctrine men
feil away from God, and in consequence of this apostasy
their natural powers deteriorated. The intellect be-
came darkened, the will prone to evil. The devil ob-
tained a certain power over man, and grace alone, which
the sacrifice of Christ merited for him, enables him to
attain his primitive destiny.

This fundamental doctrine of all Christianity can
alone explain how even the most obvious truths can be
misunderstood, the noblest feelings disowned; how man
can become so inhuman. As long as Christianity bore up
humanity, enlightened its mind, fortified its will to do
good ; as long as Christianity permeated the whole life
of man, such theories of property were impossible, such a
Separation between rieh and poor was inconceivable. But
the history of the world and, above all, the present State
of Society clearly show what becomes of humanity with-
out Christ, and without the help of that grace of which
the Apostle says that its purpose is " to reestablish all
things that are in heaven and on earth ".^^ Not reason,
but passion, governs men and their social relations, and
not reason, but the basest passions, have engendered the
doctrines on the right of property which I have set f orth.

10 Pascal, Pensees, III, 8.
" Eph. I : 10.

44 BISHOP KETTE LRR.

Of course the children of the world will not admit this.
They laugh at the doctrine of original sin and its conse-
quences ; they deny the origin and power of the passions
and pretend that they are only the result of ignorance.
According to them a better Organization of the school
would suffice to destroy the empire of the passions ; and
by a better Organization of the school they understand
in the first place the Separation of the school from the
Church and the diffusion of so-called general culture.
As the flower finds in itself the principle of its develop-
ment, so also it would suffice to put our glorious human
nature on the way of true self-development, and forth-
with passions and vices and crimes would disappear
of their own accord from the earth and true brotherly
love would be born again. This is the doctrine that is
preached from the house-tops to-day ; it is held up as
the acme of wisdom.

But I ask you, what assertion strikes truth more in-
solently in the face than this? Tf it were true, it would
follow that there must be two classes of men on earth —
the men furnished with " general human culture ", a
race without passions, without vices, acting only con-
formably to the dictates of higher reason, and the men
deprived of general culture, and in consequence the
slaves of all kinds of passions and vices. Now I ask you,
is this true? Or can you think of a more impudent lie?
How can such assertions be made at a time when the most
accurate statistics in France and Germany have proved
that neither the degree of culture nor the degree of ma-
terial well-being have the slightest influence on the num-
ber of crimes committed in a country. But why be at
pains for proofs when daily experience speaks louder
than Statistical tables? Is the miser who heaps treas-
ures upon treasures ; is the young man who traverses the
habitable globe, learns all the languages of men, knows
all peoples, and sacrifices thousands a year to his pleas-

SOCIAL REFORM.

45

ures without bestowing even a passing thought on his
poor brothers ; is the young girl who shines in society, who
makes a golden calf of her body and adores it and offers
it sacrifice of gold and precious stones while she pitilessly
leaves her poor sisters to die of want and exposure, —
are all these perhaps too Christianly educated, or do theyj
lack " general human culture " ? Where is this boasted
" general human culture " that makes the miser benev-
olent, that fills the breast of the profligate youth, the
vain-glorious maiden, with true charity for their neigh-
bor? Where is the doctrine, where is the book that can
implant in the human heart the spirit of Christian re-
nouncement, of self-denial? Show me, show me the gen-
eration imbued with true charity, reared without Chris-
tianity by your worldly wisdom alone, and I am ready
to cast Christianity overboard with you. The world has
separated itself from Christ; it has rejected Redemption
in Christ ; it has submitted to the dominion of its pas-
sions ; this is the last, the prof oundest, and truest reason
of our social misery. It is not because he is Ignorant
and without " general human culture ", but because he
has become the wretched slave of avarice and pleasure-
seeking, that the rieh man despises the command of God,
" Thou shalt give of thy abundance to the poor ". And
it is not because he did not learn his lessons well at
school, but because he serves sloth like a slave, that the
poor man Stretches out his band after the goods of
others and despises the command of God, " Thou shalt
not steal ". Guided by their sinful passions, men are
no longer able to apprehend even the simplest natural
truths that run counter to these passions. Apostasy from
Christianity is the cause of our wretched State : if we shut
our eyes to this truth we are undone. Just as the in-
dividual can make true progress only if he recognizes that
he cannot fulfil the high purpose of his existence unless
aided from without, so the world will not raise itself

46 BISHOP KETTELER.

out of its present desperate State until it is convinced that,
without external aid, it cannot solve the great problems
which it must solve at any cost or relapse into
barbarism.^^

Where then are the remedies for our social ills?
The World is powerless to heal them ; Christianity
alone can do this. Social and moral reform must
go hand in hand. This was Ketteler's answer in
1848. Later on, as we shall see, his distrust of ma-
terial-reform proposals disappeared, but he never
lost sight of the supreme importance of " the in-
terior reform of the heart ", on which he insists so
much in the sermon we are analyzing/*

For some time [he says] I have been attentively study-
ing the proposals made by the world to check the onward
march of pauperism, and I admit I have found none that
would answer the purpose. As long as the authors do
not venture beyond the commonplaces in which they
clothe their proposals, one would almost believe them to
be benefactors of the people who have discovered the
secret of the multiplication of the loaves ; but if we pass
on to their practical proposals, we cannot help pitying
them. One wishes to help us by a better apportionment
of taxes, another by the founding of savings-banks, a
third by a thorough Organization of labor, a fourth by
emigration ; some propose protection, others f ree-trade ;
some clamor for the liberty of exercising any craf t, others
for the parcelling out of all landed property; others
again for the proclamation of a Republic, which would,
so they assure us, dispose of all our ills and bring back
the Golden Age. Now these proposals are no doubt of

^^ Predigten, II, pp. 136-142.
^' Cf. Goyau, Ketteler, p. 131.

SOCIAL REFORM. ^j

more or less value, and some of them may prove quite
effective, but for the healing of our social evils they are
only a drop of water in the ocean. Many are well aware
of this and propose as a last remedy the general distri-
bution of property. Whether we shall ever put this pro-
posal to the test we cannot foresee, but one thing is cer-
tain, that it would not make the poor rieh, but the whole
World poor. In fact, whoever looks at things with un-
clouded Vision will frankly recognize that all the wis-
dom of the world is powerless and silent in the presence
of this gigantic task.

But the more powerless the doctrine of the world is
to help US, the more powerful is the doctrine of Chris-
tianity. It is precisely in social questions that the fulness
of its power is manifested. An incident in the life of
Jesus, related by the Evangelist St. Luke, will serve to
illustrate the difiference in the means proposed by Chris-
tianity and by the world : " One of the multitude said to
Him: Master, speak to my brother that he divide the
inheritance with me. But He said to him: Man, who
hath appointed Me judge or divider over you?" From
this incident the Saviour took occasion to warn those
who stood about Him against covetousness, " for a man's
life does not consist in the abundance of things which
he possesses ". He then told them the parable of the
rieh man who, when he had filled his barns after a plenti-
ful harvest, said to his soul : " Soul, thou hast much goods
laid up for many years; take thy rest, eat, drink, make
good cheer. But God said to him : Thou f ool, this night
de they require thy soul of thee; and whose shall those
things be which thou hast provided? So is he that lay-
eth up treasures for himself, and is not rieh toward
God." 1*

You see, my brethren, what answer Christ gives to
those who, like the man in the Gospel, wish to become

^* Luke 12 : 13-21.

48

BISHOP KETTELER.

rieh by a division of property, or who wish to better their
social condition by purely exterior means. He is also in
favor of a just distribution of goods, not by force how-
ever, but by the inferior regeneration of the heart. That
is the essential difference between the doctrine of Chris-
tianity and the doctrine of the world.^^ The world has
only extemal remedies, which do not reach down to the
source of the evil; Christianity heals the disease in its
source, which is the human heart. Not poverty, but cor-
ruption of heart, is the source of our social misery. Ma-
terial evils would be easy to heal, if only our hearts were
other than they are. The two great evils of our soul
are, on the one hand an insatiable thirst for enjoyment
and possession, and on the other selfishness, which has
destroyed charity in us. Rieh and poor alike suffer from
this disease. Of what use are new assessments of taxes
or savings-banks, as long as these sentiments live on in
our hearts? Against this corruption the world with all
its theories is powerless, whereas Christianity directs all
its efforts toward the reformation of the heart. I shall
try to show you from some passages in the Gospel how
our Lord sets about the accomplishment of this task ; how
He enters step by step into our soul ; how He penetrates
into it from all sides, by all avenues, as it were, in order
to free it from the twofold malady of cupidity and self-
ishness.

In the passage to which I have already called your
attention our Saviour shows us the transitoriness of the
goods of earth and the f olly of the man who heaped treas-
ures upon treasures only to leave them at the very moment
when he was about to begin to enjoy them. Elsewhere

15 « fhg Communists disdain to hide their views and aims.
They openly declare that their ends cannot be attained except by
the Subversion of the existing social order. Let the ruling classes
tremble at the thought of a Communistic revolution. The pro-
letarians have nothing but their chains to lose by it. They have
a world to gain !" Komtnun. Manif., p. 32.

SOCIAL REFORM.

49

he cries out : " Lay not up to yourself treasures on earth,
where the rust and the moth consiune, and where thieves
break through and steal ; but lay up to yourselves treas-
ures in heaven, where neither the rust nor the moth doth
consume, and where thieves do not break through, nor
steal ; for where thy treasure is, there is thy heart also." ^*
Here again it is the heart with its covetousness and self-
seeking that He wishes to heal. Here again He shows
US the folly of seeking happiness in perishable goods;
but He adds to His doctrine a powerful motive of action
by pointing to the recompense reserved for the proper
use of the goods of this world.

But the Saviour goes further still. He knows that a
sublime idea takes hold of the soul more powerfuUy than
even the hope of the highest rewards, and He holds up to
the soul wallowing in avarice the glorious picture of per-
fection. " If thou wilt be perfect," He says, " go seil
what thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have
treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me. . . . And
everyone that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or
father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands for My
Name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall
possess life everlasting." " Truly a doctrine to heal the
wounds of the soul ! To the insatiable avarice of fallen
man Christ opposes the poverty of man redeemed and
made perfect; with what success the Church shows us
in the lives of so many of her saints.

And again we see the Saviour proceeding still further
in His efforts to eure us of our selfishness, when He says :
" Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart,
and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind. This
is the greatest and the first commandment. And the
second is like to this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as

1^ Matth. 6: 19-21.
^"^ Matth. 19 : 21-29.

50 BISHOP KETTELER.

thyself." ^' And if we ask Hirn who is our neighbor,
He brings us to the wounded man on the road from Jeru-
salem to Jericho and teaches us that every beggar by the
way side, every sick man on his bed of suffering, is our
neighbor.

O my brethren, let us follow this teaching but for a
Single day and all social evils will vanish as if by en-
chantment ; let us, rieh and poor, love our neighbor as
ourselves but for one day, and the face of the earth will
be renewed. Would to God we had a true compre-
hension of the teachings of Christ !

But what shall I say to those other words of the
Saviour: "Amen I say to you, as long as you did it to
one of these My least brethren, you did it to Me." ^"
" He that receiveth you, receiveth Me, and he that re-
ceiveth Him that sent Me. . . . And whosoever shall
give to drink to one of these little ones a cup of cold
water only in the name of a disciple, amen I say to you,
he shall not lose his reward." *°

Who can describe the power these words have to de-
stroy selfishness in us? Who can teil how many teara
these words have dried, how many more they will dry
hereaf ter ? With them the Saviour has bound to the bed-
side of the sick poor that host of virgins who love Him
in them. All the love that men owe Him, He has tumed
over to the Service of the poor and the sick.

Still, the Saviour knew the heart of man; He knew
how firmly cupidity and selfishness were rooted in it, and
what violent efforts would be needed to eradicate them.
Hence He confronts those who do not wish to be in-
fluenced by higher motives with the day of judgment and
eternal punishment. He rehearses for them a scene that
will be enacted in that awful hour when He shall come

^^ Matth. 22 : 37-39.

1» Matth. 25 :40.

^° Matth. 10 : 40, 42.

SOCIAL REFORM.

51

in all His majesty and glory to separate the sheep from
the goats, when He shall say to them that shall be ou His
left-hand : " Depart from Me, you accursed, into ever-
lasting fire, which was prepared f or the devil and his an-
gels. For I was hungry and you gave Me not to eat ; I
was thirsty and you gave Me not to drink; I was a
stranger and you took Me not in; naked and you cov-
ered Me not; sick and in prison, and you did not visit
Me. Then they shall answer Hirn, saying : Lord, when
did we see Thee hungry or thirsty, or a stranger, or
naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister to Thee ?
Then He shall answer them, saying : Amen I say to you,
as long as you did it not to one of these least, neither
did you do it to Me. And these shall go into everlast-
ing punishment." ^^

But for him who should be tempted to shut his heart
even to this solemn warning our Lord has recourse to a
last remedy: He tears away the barriers from the place
of eternal pains and invites the wretch to look. On earth
He showed us the rieh profligate, clothed in purple and
fine linen, seated at sumptuous feasts, and the beggau
Lazarus who stretched out his hands in vain for the
crimibs that feil from the rieh man's table, and whose
sores the dogs came and licked. And now He showa
them to US in etemity — Lazarus in Abraham's bosom, tha
rieh profligate buried in hell. We hear him cry : " Father
Abraham, have merey on me, and send Lazarus that he
may dip the tip of his finger in water, to cool my tongue,
for I am tormented in this flame. And Abraham said to
him: Son, remember that thou didst reeeive good things
in thy lifetime, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but
now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. And be-
sides all this, between us and you there is fixed a great
chaos, so that they who would pass hence to you, cannot,
nor thence come thither." ^2

21 Matth. 25 : 41-46. 22 Luke 16 : 19-26.

52

BISHOP KETTELER.

Such is a brief resume of the doctrines by which Christ
seeks to destroy in our souls the roots of all our social
evils, selfishness and avarice. He takes the egotist to the
place of eternal punishment and shows him Dives in the
flames thirsting f or a drop of water ; He takes him to
the Judgment and shouts the words into his ears : " De-
part from Me, you accursed one, into everlasting fire " ;>
He takes him to the rieh man, who, when he has amassed
many treasures and is about to enjoy them, hears the
words : " Thou f ool, this night do they require thy soul
of thee ". He shows him the treasures of earth rusty and
moth-eaten and despoiled by thieves; He holds up to him
the ways of perfection ; He teaches him to love his
brother as himself and to see a brother in every man ; He
puts Himself in the place of the poor man and transfers
to the poor the love men owe to Him.

Such is the power of the Christian teaching, such the
impotence of the teachings of the world in the face of
social evils. But far more powerful still is Christianity,
far more impotent the world in life for the healing of
these evils.

In Order to heal the social evils it is not enough to f eed
and clothe a f ew poor men more and to send a few dollars
more by our servants to the Bureau of Public Charities :
that is but the smallest part of our duty. We must
bridge over the vast abyss that yawns between the rieh
and the poor; we must heal the deep-rooted moral cor-
ruption into which so many of our poor brethren have
fallen, who have lost all faith, all hope, all love of God
and their neighbor ; we must relieve the Spiritual poverty
of the poor. It is with the poor as with the rieh — the
source of social evils Springs within their own hearts.
Just as covetousness, self-indulgence, egotism have es^
tranged the rieh from the poor, even so covetousness, self-
indulgence, egotism, joined to corporal misery, have ex-
cited the hatred of the poor against the rieh. Instead of

SOCIAL REFORM.

53

looking for the sources of their wretchedness where they
are really to be found, they persist in seeing in the rieh
alone the abettors of their ills. It is with the poor as
with the rest of men — they see the mote in the eye of
the rieh, but they do not see the beam in their own eye;
and hence we see in so many of our poor brethren a
frightful degree of moral corruption, where hatred of
their fellow-men, avarice, pleasure-seeking, and aversion
to labor go hand-in-hand with the direst distress.
Maxims and counsels, however excellent, are of as little
avail as occasional succors, which are accepted and dis-
sipated with the thought that much more by f ar, nay all,
is due to them. Here there is need of a new force to
heal their heart, the force of life and charity. The poor
must be made to feel that there is such a thing as a
practical charity that thinks of them, before they will
believe in the theory of charity. To this end we must
extend our search for poverty and the poor into their
most hidden recesses, discover the sources of their misery,
share their pains and their tears ; no degradation, no
squalor must make us recoil ; we must bear to be mis-
understood, repulsed, rewarded with ingratitude. Borne
up by charity, we must renew our attacks until we have
broken the thick ice-crust under which the heart of the
poor is often buried and flood it with love.

Just as God does not treat the sinner — and we are all
sinners — only according to His justice, but overcomes his
indifference by the superabundance of His love, so we,
imitating God, must vanquish our fellow-men by ex-
cess of charity. This is, according to my conviction and
experience, the only way to change the heart of the great
masses of the poor.^^

After vividly contrasting the pretended friends of
the people, the Socialistic agitators, " the men of

^^ Predigten, II, pp. 142 ff.

54

BISHOP KETTELER.

the hollow phrases ", with the true friends of the
people — Jesus Christ, who practised what He
taught, and His followers in all ages — the preacher
humbly, supplicatingly concluded : " Would to God
I had gained to-day even one soul and otie life for
the love of Jesus and the comfort of the poor!"

The day after this sermon he received a letter,
with an enclosure of sixty florins, which ran as
follows : " It is fitting that you, most esteemed and
amiable preacher of God's word, should see the
fruits of your preaching, in order that you may
know how deeply your words have penetrated into
the hearts and reins of your hearers." Ketteier
handed over the money to the Sisters of Charity
for the erection of an orphan asylum.

There are some exceptionally fine pasages in the
sermon on " The Christian Idea of Human Lib-
erty." For example, the foUowing characteriza-
tion of the materialistic atheism of our day :

It has been reserved for cur time to repeat on earth
the crime of the Angel who, with füll knowledge of his
relation to God, dared to revolt against Him ; we have in
cur midst not one or a few atheists, but a whole gener-
ation of atheists. As long as the stones exist of which
these walls are built, as long as the sun shines upon the
face of the earth and proclaims the glory of Him who
made it, as long as the dew drops from heaven to re-
fresh the flowers of the field, as long as the heavenly
dew of grace sinks into the soul of man to waken it to
divine life and divine love, such a cold-blooded, diaboli-
cal doctrine has not come forth out of the mouth of
man.^*

^* Predigten, II, p. 163.

SOCIAL REFORM. 55

And how beautifully he speaks of the soul's tes-
timony of its own immortality in the sermon on
" Man's Destiny " :

If faith in immortality, in a future life, is an illusion,
how could such an illusion have ever arisen and been be-
lieved? How comes it that we do not graze contentedly
like dumb cattle on the earth, but that amidst all the
bustle of life there is a restless longing in the heart of
man, like the longing after a beloved home? How comes
it that at all times the greatest and profoundest minds
have clung to this faith, that noble natures, pure souls,
above all, proclaim it enthusiastically ? When in the
autumn and the springtime we watch the flocks of birds
passing swiftly over our heads, what means the longing
that draws us away to other lands? When at night we
raise our eyes to the twinkling stars in the firmament, so
far, so high above us, what means the swelling and
straining of our heart, as though it would tear itself free
from the body to seek a tearless home beyond the seas?
It is the soul's testimony that we dwell in exile here, that
we are destined for another, a better fatherland.^^

In the same sermon he shows the delusiveness of
the Socialistic dream of universal happiness here
below :

I hear it said that poverty is to disappear and that all
are to be placed in a position to enjoy the pleasures of
life. Granted that the impossible will happen and that
poverty will be no more, is poverty the only evil that
bars the way to the enjoyment of life? The vast army
of those who are burdened with mental and bodily dis-
eases, who are confined to the sick-room for years, or even
for a whole lifetime, what is their destiny? what consola-
tion can we give them? Our so-called friends of the

^^ Predigten, II, p. 176.

56

BISHOP KETTELER.

people in the marketplace do not push their way to the
beds of the sick ; that is our duty. What consolation do
they give us to take to the suff erers ?

I have often marveled at the wonderful strength the
doctrines of Christianity are capable of imparting to the
soul of man amidst the most excruciating and uninter-
mitting sufferings. No more palpable proof of the divine
power and truth of Christianity, it seems to me, can be
found than the cheerfulness it is able to infuse into the
souls of the afflicted. Standing beside the bed of such
silent sufiferers, I could not but wonder and adore. In
their poverty, misery, and nameless pains I never heard a
Word of complaint ; they were filled with an interior joy
such as I had never observed in the worldly-minded
amidst all their pleasures. All I had ever seen and heard
in the world of courage, strength, resoluteness, paled be-
fore the courage and strength with which I beheld Chris-
tian souls bearing up under their sufferings. . . . Bring
the teachers of materialism to the bedside of the sick, to
the dying, to the grave — and the flood of their eloquence
will dry up. Nature cannot be so unnatural as to give
life to creatures that cannot attain their destiny. As
long as there is one sick man, one sufferer on this earth,
who cannot partake of material pleasures, yet feels that
he is made for happiness, our soul must acknowledge
that she is created for a higher existence than that traced
out by the materialistic social economist.^*

From Mainz, Ketteier hastened back to Hopsten
to spend the Christmas festival vi^ith his flock.
Frankfort had seen the last of him. At the I56th
Session of the National Parliament, on 22 January,
1849, President Simson made the ofiicial announce-
ment that Pastor von Ketteier had definitely re-
signed his seat.

^^ Predigten, II, pp. 178-180.

CHAPTER VI.

Provost of St. Hedwig's in Berlin. 1849- 1850.

WITH restless energy Ketteier resumed his pas-
toral work at Hopsten. The face of the parish
was gradually changing. The old indifference in re-
ligious matters was giving place to earnest zeal in
the Service of God. The last touches to this work of
renovation were given by the mission preached by
the well-known Jesuit Father, Henry Behrens, in
the spring of 1849. Father Behrens had been en-
gaged for many years in teaching and missionary
work in Switzerland when the storm of radical in-
tolerance that swept over free Helvetia in 1847 set
him adrift. After conducting a band of fathers
and brothers to the United States, he took up his re-
sidence in Münster. Here Ketteier met him and,
Struck by his deep piety and solid learning, invited
him to hold a little mission in his parish during
Holy Week. Father Behrens preached all the ser-
mons, twenty in number, and Ketteier, his brother
Richard, John Bernard Brinkman, the future Bishop
of Münster, and Paulus Melchers, afterward Arch-
bishop of Cologne and Cardinal, heard the confes-
sions. This mission was the first held for over half
a Century in Northern Germany. Ketteler's ini-
tiative was soon followed everywhere to the great
Spiritual benefit of the people, who were prepared
in this way to withstand the whirlwind of the
Kulturkampf.

58 BIS HOP KETTELER.

In 1850 Father Behrens became first rector of
the Jesuit College of Friedrichsburg, near Münster;
then Provincial of the German Province of the So-
ciety, from 1856 to 1860. When the Jesuits were
driven out of Germany by the Kulturkampf, he
sought and found a last home in the New World,
where he did untold good as a zealous missionary
tili his holy death in Canisius College, Buffalo, 17
October, 1895/

After Frankfort and Mainz it was vain for Ket-
teier to think that he would be permitted to end his
days as a " Bauernpastor " in an out-of-the-way
Westphalian borough. When the Provostship of
St. Hedwig's in Berlin became vacant in 1849, this
important post was offered to Ketteier, who ac-
cepted it only after repeated insistence on the part
of the Prussian Government, the Prince- Bishop of
Breslau, and his own Ordinary.

In the middle of the last Century the state of
things Catholic in the Prussian Capital was deplor-
able in the extreme. "A plot in the vineyard of
the Lord overgrown with weeds," Ketteier himself
called Berlin in a letter to Bishop Diepenbrock, and
Ketteier never was a pessimist. "A congregation
of 20,000 Catholics and nearly 5,000 soldiers," he
says in one of his sermons of that period, " and
only one church and only a few Masses; and for
all that the church is empty. There is much talk
of the need of a new church ! My dear brethren,
our church is too big. The Catholics do not come
to church. In other places there are ten churches
for 20,000 inhabitants, and all are filled morning

1 Pf Ulf, I, p. 173.

SOCIAL REFORM. 5g

and afternoon ; here we have one, and it is empty 1,
On some Sundays and holidays only a few hundred
fulfil the sacred Obligation of hearing Mass." ^

It was no small source of joy to the new Provost
that the few hundred who did frequent St. Hedwig's
were Sterling children of the Church, ready to pro-
fess their faith before the world and to make heroic
sacrifice, if need be, to help on a good work. A
Catholic hospital, absolutely necessary as it was,
had always been looked upon as a pious dream never
to be realized. No one could remember when a nun
had last appeared on the streets of Berlin. To at-
tempt to introduce them was regarded as presump-
tuous temerity. But the nuns and the hospital did
come after all.

Early in the 'forties eight young Westphalian
ladies who feit called to the religious life, finding
no sisterhood in their native land answering to their
aspirations, journeyed to Berlin to beg passports for
France from the Government. Though not nuns
yet they dressed and lived together as nuns. They
were detained several days in the Capital, the
cynosure of all eyes. After their departure, a jour-
neyman-shoemaker said to one of the curates of St.
Hedwig's: " If the Berliners don't stone traveling
nuns, they won't stone settled ones either." The
journeyman is probably right, the clergy thought,
and they signified their readiness to make the ex-
periment. But those to whom they broached the
matter told them they were mad, as there was not a
Cent of capital on hand and not much hope of get-
ting any in Berlin where there were but few well-

* Predigten, I, p. 186.

6o BISHOP KETTELER.

to-do Catholics. One morning, however, a jour-
neyman-joiner called at the presbytery and, laying
seventeen Thalers ^ on the table, " These are my
savings from six months' work," said he; "I give
them toward the founding of a convent for Sisters
of Charity." The spell was broken. " What a
poor journeyman can do, we can do too," the better-
situated Catholics said, and in a short time enough
money was collected to rent a spacious building to
serve as convent and hospital. When the four nuns
sent by the Bishop of Nancy arrived, they had
neither chair nor table nor bed, not even wood to
build a fire with. Protestant neighbors lent them
mattresses to sleep on the first night. Two years
later they could boast of sixty-two beds, all occu-
pied, too, for they had not only not been stoned
by the Berliners, but were even idolized by them.
Catholics, Protestants, unbelievers, high and low,
wanted to be nursed by the Sisters.*

When Ketteier came to Berlin this modest hos-
pital had long been too small and he resolved to en-
large it sufficiently to accommodate three hundred
patients. For this purpose 60,000 Thalers were re-
quired, and the Government could not be counted
on for even a moderate Subvention. But Ketteier
was not the man to be frightened by obstacles, how-
ever great, when there was question of assisting the
sick and the poor. In the spring of 1850 he made
an appeal for contributions to all the Catholics of
Germany, addressing himself particularly to the
small tradesmen, the journeymen, day-laborers, and

^ A Thaler := 75 cents.

* Cf. Proceedings of the First Katholikentag ; Mainz, 1848.

SOCIAL REFORM. 6l

servant-girls, whom he asked to work for a few
days to save the Thaler to be returned to them later
on with interest.^ The success exceeded the most
sanguine expectations. " My appeal," he told his
parishioners from the pulpit of St. Hedwig's on
Pentecost Day, " has, with the grace of God, not
been in vain. I have received several contribu-
tions lately which affected me deeply. One person,
for example, brought me 300 Thalers, the highest
sum received until now. And who was this person?
. . . A journeyman contributed 35 Thalers."

The 300 Thalers were the gift of a poor Pro-
testant woman, widow of a Catholic wood-cutter.
During the lifetime of her husband she had been
accustomed to assist at the Sunday Services in St.
Hedwig's, and after his death she had kept up the
practice. One of Ketteler's sermons in behalf of
the hospital had made a deep Impression on her,
and shortly thereafter she presented herseif be-
fore him carrying 300 Thalers in silver roUs in her
apron. They were the savings of a lifetime, and
the Provost strenuously refused to take them. But
the good woman would not be gainsaid. She had
asked, she said, a sign from God that this gift to
the hospital was pleasing to Him, and the sign had
been given to her; and would she not be cared for
by the Sisters in sickness and old age?

A twelvemonth later Ketteier could write : " The
subscription begun by me a year ago has reached
50,000 Thalers, and the walls of the new hospital
are well above ground." ® In the spring of 1852
the sum of 500 Thalers was contributed " by a bene-

5 Briefe, p. 199. ® Briefe, p. 228.

62 BISHOP KETTELER.

factor in Mainz ". The benefactor was Bishop von
Ketteier.

On the third of December, 1886, St. Hedwig's
Hospital celebrated the reception of the hundred
thousandth patient. He was to receive first-class
treatment free of charge. But it so happened that a
sick fund paid for him and the celebration was
postponed tili the arrival of the one hundred thou-
sand and first patient. A splendid reception was
prepared ; physicians, sisters, nurses, officials, in
their best uniforms, formed a lane at the main
entrance. Hall, corridors, and verandas shone re-
splendent in festive decoration. The one hundred
thousand and first patient was brought in — a poor
old Protestant woman."^

Ketteler's incumbency at St. Hedwig's was of
short duration, but the seed which he sowed brought
forth fruit a hundredfold. " His forceful, impres-
sive sermons — ' there's something peculiarly au-
thoritative about them,' Savigny, one of the future
leaders of the Centre, used to say — were universally
praised," wrote Prince Bishop Förster of Breslau
after Ketteler's death ; " so were also his inexhaus-
tible love and solicitude for the poor of the parish.
One day he brought a pillow concealed in the folds
of his paletot to a poor family and found his
proteges doing füll justice to a fried goose, which
they had bought with the money he had sent them
the day before. To a friend, who had expressed
his Indignation at such a flagrant abuse of his alms,
Ketteier answered mildly : " Of course the money
was not meant to be used in this way, but I was

^ Wenzel, Ketteier u. die sot. Frage, p. 50.

SOCIAL REFORM. 63

glad none the less that the good people enjoyed a
hearty meal for once in their lives."

His love of the poor and his " reverence for the
dignity of poverty " found expression in many of
his Berlin sermons. The one on Almsgiving,
preached 9 December, 1849, is a beautiful com-
mentary on the teaching of St. Thomas on this
subject.

In Moral Theology [he says] we distinguish between
commandments and simple counsels. By command-
ments we mean the precepts we must follow if we wish to
attain etemal happiness ; by counsels, the precepts
through whose observance we are enabled to reach a
higher degree of perfection.

People are only too often disposed to look on alms-
giving as a good work indeed, but not as a strict Obliga-
tion. Such a conception is a fundamental error in a
Christian soul. I maintain, on the contrary, with St
Thomas and St. Liguori, that almsgiving in general is a
strict Obligation, as sacred and binding as any other
Obligation the fulfilment of which is necessary for
salvation.

Ketteier quotes in support of his view a number
of Scripture texts * and a passage from the Summa
in which St. Thomas maintains that the Obligation
to love our neighbor implies not only the giving of
good words but also the doing of good deeds, i. e.
almsgiving."

If it is true that almsgiving is not merely a coun-
sel but a strict Obligation, does it follow from thi»

' Prov. 21:13; Ecclus. 4:1, 5, 8; James 2:13.
" Summa theol., II, II, q. 32, a. 5.

64

BISHOP KETTELER.

that the poor have a right to demand the assistance
of the rieh ? Ketteier answers :

The truth that almsgiving is an Obligation is not in-
frequently interpreted by the poor of onr day to mean that
they have a right to demand alms from the rieh, to ex-
tort and force it from them. This fundamental error of
Communism, which tries to procure by violent meams
the distribution of the superabundance of the rieh
amongst the poor, is zealously propagated by the adher-
ents of this doctrine, and the conduct of numbers of poor
people shows only too clearly what deep roots this
theory, which has always been repudiated by Christian-
ity, has already taken amongst the people.

In like manner, the doctrine which teaches that alms-
giving is not a duty of strict justice ( Zwangsp flicht — ■
Rechtspfiicht ) is distorted by the rieh, who argue that,
because almsgiving is not an Obligation of justice, it is
no Obligation at all, and that, when they give alms, they
deserve praise for their good grace and condescension.

Both of these notions are equally erroneous. God
has laid down two supreme laws to regulate the distri-
bution of temporal goods, the law of justice in the
natural order, a law that the State is obliged to pro-
tect even by force, and the law of charity in the super-
natural order, which it is the Church's mission to enforce
by means of the individual conscience. . . . The Obli-
gation of almsgiving is, therefore, a true Obligation, but
not an Obligation of justice. It can be realized by an
appeal to conscience only, not by coercion. He who
breaks a law binding in justice is a thief, or a defrauder,
or a robber ; he who violates the law of charity is no
less a sinner : for the precept of charity occupies a
higher place in the eyes of God than the precept of
justice. Not the spirit of God but the spirit of the
World has taught the world to put a false value on these

SOCIAL REFORM.

65

actions. For while the world despises and abhors theft,
and justly so, while it connects the idea of shame with
theft, and rightly so, hard-heartedness, uncharitableness,
avarice are not generally held in the odor of disgrace,
and in this the world is altogether wrong. It will not
be thus on the Day of Judgment. . . .

Although from the Christian point of view the
nature of the Obligation of almsgiving is well-
defined and incontestable, the question as to the ex-
tent, the limits of this Obligation has given rise to
controversies without end. Ketteier himself avows
this when he says : " Simple as the general prin-
ciples in regard to almsgiving are, the matter be-
comes complicated when we enter into detail and
try to determine when we are bound to give alms.
This must be left to the individual conscience. . . ."

Have we done our duty if we give alms to those who
appeal to us, or are we obliged, with Job, to search out
misery, to visit poverty in its secret retreats? St. Thomas
was of opinion that, unless we are specially charged with
the care of the poor, it sufficed to help such as made their
distress known to us. But in his time the care of the
poor was in the hands of the Church, whom God had
appointed to be the Mother of the poor. She had the
love and the means to care for the poor, and men were
justified in assmning that she did so. Things are dif-
ferent now. The State has usurped this most beau-
tiful province of the Church also, thereby inflicting
as deep a wound upon the Church as upon itself,
upon the Church, by separating her from the poor ; upon
itself, by exhausting its resources without adequately
meeting the needs of the poor. Hence it appears to me
to be a truly Christian duty to search out misery, and
not to wait until it obtrudes itself upon our notice.

66 BISHOP KETTELER.

The question of the superfluous Is a favorite topic
of controversy. As to the manner of determining
it, Ketteier declares that this is an affair of each
one's conscience, but that we must beware of apply-
ing the Standard of the world, which fails to see
superfluity even in the largest fortune. Riches
must be measured with the yard-stick of conscience,
and we know that the Gospel preaches detachment
and the spirit of poverty.

All theologians agree [he continues] that we are bound,
under pain of mortal sin, to help a poor man who is in
extreme necessity, i. e. who is in imminent danger of
death from want of nourishment, clothing or lodging,
even at the sacrifice of what we have need of, not to
satisfy our essential wants, but to preserve our Station
in life.

Abstracting from the case of extreme necessity, it is
certain that, by neglecting our duty, we rim the risk o£
committing mortal sin only if, on the one hand, as St.
Thomas says,^** we are face to face with a pressing need,
and no one is by to bring immediate succor, and if, on
the other hand, we have more than we need to keep up
life itself and our Station in life.^^

These rules serve to determine a minimum in the
Obligation of almsgiving. Christianity aims higher,
as those ages witness during which its spirit ani-
mated men and institutions. Without wishing to
universalize the vow of evangelical poverty, with-
out pretending to make a commandment of what is
only a counsel, without attempting to force on the
generality of men an ideal that would be equivalent

10 II, II, q. 32, a. 5, ad 3.

11 Predigten, I, pp. 35-44.

SOCIAL REFORM.

67

to a practical realization of Communism, it preaches
to all detachment from riches and brotherly love,
If its precepts were followed, society would be con-
verted into that glorious organism which some mod-
ern thinkers have called the Christian social order}'
The feast of Pentecost gave Ketteier occasion to
speak on one of his favorite themes, true and falsa
Communism. He says :

There must be something great about Community of
temporal goods, seeing tliat it was one of the first fruits
of the Holy Ghost. But how different was this com-
munism in the first Christian Church from its caricature
in our days. The men who practised Community of
goods in those days were vessels of the Holy Ghost.
Through the Holy Ghost they had become one heart
and one soul, and the owners of lands and houses sold
these of their own free will and laid the price at the feet
of the Apostles. Hence St. Peter said to Ananias, who
had lied to him as to the price of the land : " Whilst
it remained, did it not remain to thee? And after it
was sold, was it not in thy power?" ^^ But now those
who speak of Community of goods are not men filled with
the Spirit of God, but with the spirit which the world
serves. They do not want to give up what is their
own, but to rob others of what by right belongs to
them. In those days the idea of Community of goods
sprang from the spirit of love, whereas now it Springs
from the spirit of avarice. It is the giant task of our
age to fill up again the abyss that divides the rieh from
the poor, and woe to us if it is not filled up : years
will come compared to which the year 'forty-eight was
only a childish plaything. But this abyss can be filled

1' Girard, Ketteier et la question ouvriere, p. 268.
13 Acts 5:4.

58 BISHOP KETTELER.

up only by the same Spirit who wrought in the first
Christian Community. We must first become one heart
and one soul again/*

In the midst of his labors for the spiritual and
temporal welfare of the scattered Catholics of
Brandenburg and Pommerania, Ketteier was sum-
moned by the Supreme Head of the Church to un-
dertake a still more onerous and responsible work.
On 7 December, 1849, Pius IX rejected the nomin-
ation of Professor Schmid of Giessen as bishop by
the Canons of Mainz. After some hesitation and
Opposition the chapter proposed three names to the
Pope, among them Ketteler's, and on 15 March,
1850, Pius IX named him Bishop: " To provide,"
as he wrote to Archbishop Reisach of Munich, " for
Mainz, in the person of Baron Ketteier a Bishop
after God's own Heart, such a one as the Diocese
so much needs. O how many prayers have I said
and ordered said for Germany and for Mainz in
particular."

The wishes and prayers of the Pontiff were heard.
From 25 July, 1850, the day of his consecration,
tili his saintiy death in the Capuchin Convent in
Burghausen, Ketteier was " a Bishop after God's
own Heart."

One of Ketteler's last acts before taking leave of
St. Hedwig's was to lead a Corpus Christi pro-
cession for the first time since the Reformation
through the streets of Berlin to the neighboring
Spandau. " Last Sunday," the Berlin correspond-
ent of the Allgemeine Zeitung wrote 4 June, " an

"^^ Predigten, I, pp. 381-2.

SOCIAL REFORM. 6g

open air celebration took place here that can be
justly called an event: for the first time since Ber-
lin became Protestant, the Corpus Christi proces-
sion of St. Hedwig's Catholic Church passed
through the Brandenburger Tor over Charlotten-
burg to Spandau. Altar-boys led the procession,
which was headed by Provost Ketteier, who has
just been elected Bishop o£ Mainz. The spectators
maintained a very respectful attitude, many taking
off their hats. I consider this a very significant
sign of the times. When Frederick the Great was
asked for permission to hold a procession outside
the church, he answered : ' I give my permission,
but whether the street-boys of Berlin will give
theirs is another question.' The Government pro-
mised Ketteier that measures would be taken against
possible disturbances, but these precautions were
fortunately superfluous. The mounted police-
officers who followed the line of march at a great
distance were hardly remarked by anyone."

Ketteler's brother Richard, who had followed him
in the rectorship of Hopsten, had also been selected
to succeed him in Berlin. He had already re-
ceived the official notification of his appointment,
when he suddenly resolved to follow out an old
yearning of his heart for the religious life. He
gave all he possessed to the poor, retaining only
enough to buy a pectoral cross and chain for his
brother. Then " as a poor man he applied for
admission into the ranks of the poor disciples of
St. Francis." He died in 1855 as Guardian of the
Capuchin Convent of Mainz.

CHAPTER VII.

Ketteler's Episcopal Consecration. His Vow
of poverty. 1850.

ON 30 June, Ketteier preached for the last time
in St. Hedwig's; then he retired to Har-
kotten, the ancestral seat of the family, to write his
first pastoral and to prepare for his consecration
by a good retreat.

It had been Ketteler's earnest wish to enter Mainz
as unostentatiously as possible, but the Catholic
leaders in and out of the city, to whom the mach-
inations of the Schmid party were well-known,
were of opinion that a gorgeous reception would go
far toward rallying the better Catholic dement and
discomfiting the trouble-makers, and they prevailed
on him not to cross their plans. On 16 July, he
arrived in Bingen, where a steamer dressed with
flags from stem to stern and bearing the auspicious
name " Concordia," took him on board. The jour-
ney from Bingen to Mainz resembled a triumphal
procession. Both banks of the Rhine were lined
with countless throngs of the faithful. At Biebrich
the reigning Duke of Nassau, though a Protestant,
had ordered a splendid welcome to be prepared.
The military band played; twelve guns fired
Salutes; the Duke himself appeared on the balcony
of his Castle to greet the new prince of the Church.
Still more enthusiastic was the reception at Mainz.
The whole city Avas in holiday attire to welcome the

SOCIAL REFORM.

71

successor of St. Boniface and to accompany him to
the ancient cathedral, A magnificent torch-light
parade brought this memorable day to a close/

On 23 July, Ketteier proceeded to the Grand-
Ducal residence in Darmstadt to take the custom-
ary oath of allegiance. The words he addressed to
his sovereign on this solemn occasion have come
down to US. " In the exercise of my holy ofifice,"
he Said, " I shall endeavor, to the best of my ability,
to give unto God the things that are God's, and
unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and I shall
strive at the same time to spread these sentiments
which I regard as the true foundations of States,
amongst those who are entrusted to my care. I
trust, on the other hand, to the Christian sentiments
of your Royal Highness, that your Highness' will
and your Highness' laws shall never demand of me
what is contrary to the laws of God and the ordin-
ances of His Church, for, in that case, I should be
obliged to say : Non licet." ^

The solemn consecration took place on 25 July,
the consecrator being Archbishop Hermann von
Vicari of Freiburg. The saintly Bishop Blum of
Limburg delivered a remarkable sermon on the oc-
casion, in which he prophesied that, under Ketteler's
leadership, Mainz would attain once more a signi-
ficance similar to that which it enjoyed in the early
ages of the German Church.*

1 Beschreibung des festlichen Empfanges und der feierlichen
Consecration des hochwürdigsten Bischofs von Mainz. Mainz,
1850.

2 Pf Ulf, I, p. 217.

3 Cardinal Diepenbrock, prince-bishop of Breslau, made a
similar prediction ; in June, 1850, on the eve of Ketteler's de-
parture from Berlin, he wrote to Frederick William IV : " It is

72 BISHOP KETTELER.

After Bishop Blum Ketteier himself ascended the
pulpit. He addressed words of truly apostolio
force and tenderness to the several classes of his
flock : the sinners and the erring, the poor, the par-
ents, the priests. To the poor he said :

I speak to you who labor and are heavily laden with
sorrow and misery and wretchedness. To you who are
children of God in a very special manner, the Saviour has
given me a very special mission. It is true I cannot
hope to remedy all your temporal ills, however ardently
I should desire to do so. But one thing I do promise
you: I shall endeavor to be a good shepherd to you also,
and with all the means God gives me to relieve you of
your Spiritual distress and thus at the same time of some
of your temporal bürden.

The effect of Ketteler's address, " simple, but
pregnant with meaning," the effect above all of his
Personality, was overwhelming. Twenty-six years
later a noble lady "* wrote: "The twenty-fifth of
July, 1850, the day on which I stood at the foot of
the altar with Baron Hertens, the Military Gov-
ernor of Mainz, as a pious sharer in the consecration
solemnity, has remained indelibly impressed on my
mind. . . . No personality has ever made such an
Impression on me." ^

Ketteler's first Pastoral, which bears the date of
his consecration, contains his famous " vow of

with the deepest sorrow that I see him depart, for he is a minister
of God in the füll sense of the word. . . . Among the successors
of St. Boniface he will hold a prominent place in the See which,
in former times, was of such high significance for the German
Church and the German Empire." Hochland, Oct., 191 1, p. 31.

* Dorothy, Duchess of Sagan.

5 Briefe, p. 527.

SOCIAL REFORM. 73

poverty ". Speaking of the duties imposed on him
by his holy office, he said :

I must be prepared to give my lif e f or the flock of Christ,
therefore surely also all eise that is of less value than lif e.
I confess that, f rom this moment, all I am and all I have
shall belong not to me but to you. I confess that I am in
duty bound to avoid all superfluity, all luxury in my
appointments, and to use for charitable purposes what-
ever I can spare from my episcopal revenues. I confess
that I am bound to devote all my time, all the powers
of my body and my soul to the service of God and of
your souls. I have vowed to God through His Church
to fulfil this Obligation, and I beg you to pray to God
for me, that in His great mercy He may hasten to the
assistance of my weak will.®

Elsevi^here in the same document he says :

The trumpery of the world, the power of the senses
shall not dazzle our eyes. No garment, however soiled,
HO hut, however lowly, no himian body, however dis-
figured, shall hinder us from recognizing under this outer
covering the image of God and its destiny. . . , We shall
render due honor to the image of God in every poor
child, in every desolate human being, and shall do all
in our power to rescue them from sin and raise them to
the dignity of princes of God's people. . . . Believe me,,
I seek among you nothing for myself. Whatever I pos-
sess when I die shall belong entirely to you and your
poor, and tili then I desire nothing but labor and pains
in your service.''^

What he promised he adhered to most conscien-
tiously all his life. " The greatest simplicity

^ Hirtenbriefe, p. 6. ^ Hirtenbriefe, p. 12.

74

BISHOP KETTE LER.

reigned in his household," says Dr. Liesen,
Ketteler's secretary.

A sofa, half a dozen cane-chairs, a larger writing-
table, and an ordinary table made up the whole furniture
of his sitting-room. The little bed-room with its piain
bedstead has caused more than one visitor to exclaim:
What? That was the bed-room of the noble Bishop of
Mainz! Silverware, Ketteier never possessed; even the
silver table-ware that belonged to the Bishops of Mainz
he allowed to be used two or three times at most during
the twenty-seven years of his administration. The or-
dinary midday meal consisted of soup and two courses:
supper, of one dish; a light wine from the Palatinate
mixed with water was his regulär beverage; a second
wine appeared on the table only on feast days or when
guests were present. At the door of the episcopal resi-
dence, whether the Bishop was at home or not, bread and
money were distributed to the poor every Wednesday and
Saturday. . . . He was a faithful member of the St.
Vincent de Paul Society, and no one paid his dues more
regularly than he. Immediately on receipt of his salary
he put a fixed sum in a poor-box he had made for that
purpose. He looked on this money as the property of
the poor, and to use it for any other purpose would have
been in his eyes a violation of duty. " Since I am a
Bishop of Mainz," he wrote in 1862, " I share my in-
come, as is my duty, with the poor." ®

Once, in 1864, when the Frankfurter Journal
held up the Catholic clergy as a " money-hungry
caste," as " the blood-suckers of the people," the
Mainzer Journal letorted: " If our multi-million-
aire manufacturers and all our other banknote-

^ Liesen, Ketteier u. die soziale Frage, pp. 9-10.

SOCIAL REFORM. 75

bristling magnates would but enlarge their hearts
and spend about a tenth-part of their annual re-
venues for the benefit of the people, as the Bishop
of Mainz does every year with almost the whole of
his income, the labor question would be happily
solved, and we should see productive associations
paying yearly dividends to the workmen and chari-
table institutions for the sick and the infirm la-
borer springing up everywhere; and whatever is
good and useful in the modern Systems of Schulze-
Delitzsch and of Lassalle would bring forth the
most beautiful fruits on the soll of Christian
charity."

Beautifully in harmony with his whole life is
Ketteler's last will and testament. "All my furni-
ture," he says, " as well as the rest of the inventory,
of my house, my linen, my clothes, and similar ob-
jects, shall be distributed among the poor by the
local St. Vincent de Paul Society. Besides the
money to be found in my writing-desk I am pos-
sessed of no property. What I was possessed of
I used for charitable purposes. Whatever ready
money may be on band shall likewise be given to
the poor through the St. Vincent de Paul Society."
The same Society was to dispose of the few valu-
ables that had been presented to him on various oc-
casions, amongst others a cross valued at 1,200
marks, the gift of an Austrian Archduke.

After Ketteler's death one of his bitterest foes,
the Liberal Kölnische Zeitung, was forced to con-
fess : " It is almost literally true that the mighty
Champion of the Ecclesia militans died poor!"

CHAPTER VIII.

The Social Reformer on the Episcopal
Throne. 1850-1877.

TWO days previous to Ketteler's consecration
another great churchman of the time, Arch-
bishop von Geissei of Cologne, had written to his
auxiliary bishop, Dr. Baudri :

The poor Bishop has a hard piece of work cut out
for him. Eyewitnesses of his entrance into Mainz told
me of conversations they had overheard on that occasion,
which are an index of the prevalent religious depravity.
Old Catholic Mainz has sunk very low. May God help
the new Bishop to raise it up again ! The divisions
among the clergy are deep and wide — it will be no easy
task to heal them. Energy and resolution alone will be
able to do it.^

There was indeed need of the help of God and of
all the boundless energy and zeal of a Ketteier to
set things right in the Diocese of Mainz. Josephin-
ism, the Revolution, the French domination, Ron-
geanism, had worked havoc with the ancient Cath-
olic glories of Mainz. A strong anti-Catholic spirit
had gradually taken possession of the educated
classes of the episcopal city; in most of the other
eitles and towns of the Diocese the Catholics were
in a helpless minority. The number of really zeal-
ous pastors of souls had woefuUy decreased. Cath-
olic aspirants to the priesthood were required to

1 Pfülf, I, p. 221.

2 -1

o J

SOCIAL REFORM. j'j

pursue their philosophical and theological studies
at Giessen, a Protestant university town that could
not even boast of a Catholic church. Here they
were prepared for anything rather than the sacred
ministry. Many joined the Burschenschaften,^
made light of missing Mass on Sundays, seldom re-
ceived the Sacraments, drank hard, fought duels,
and studied as little as possible. For many years
the Catholic students had to attend the lectures of
the Protestant Professor of Philosophy, and several
members of the Catholic Faculty were justly sus-
pected of holding unsound doctrines. The hand of
the State lay heavy on the Church. The Grand-Ducal
authorities were more concerned with the Sunday
collections in Gundersheim or Bingen than with the
Hessian finances. Parish priests were looked upon
as mere State officials and treated accordingly.

Ketteier began the work of Catholic revival by
withdrawinghis theologians from Giessen and open-
ing a clerical seminary in Mainz provided with an
excellent stafF of professors — Riffel, Heinrich,
Moufang, Haffner, men who attained an interna-
tional reputation for piety, zeal, and learning.
When all was ready for the opening, the Bishop
gave notice of his intentions to the Government in
Darmstadt and at the same time asked for financial
aid. The Government thought that the most ef-
fective means of frustrating the Bishop's plans was
to wrap itself in profound silence. But Ketteier
was not only a churchman, he was also a lawyer.
He knew that the State could not legally prevent
him from taking the step he was contemplating, and
2 Political associations of Germr.n students.

■j^ BISHOP KETTELER.

SO, without more ado, and in spite of an injunction
from Darmstadt, where the Ministry had suddenly
recovered the power of speech, the solemn opening
of the seminary took place i May, 1851. Forty-
seven students reported, while not a single one re-
gistered at Giessen. This coup d'etat, as Goyau
calls it, was a severe blow to the tyranny of the
Josephist Bureaucracy and marked the beginning of
better days for the Church in Hesse. " With the
founding of the Seminary," he wrote to his clergy
6 January, 1852, " I am confident that a source of
blessing for the Diocese has been opened and a
headspring of corruption stopped up. I need not
teil you that, having law and conscience on my side,
I shall never give up the Seminary. I should sub-
mit only to open violence, and then suspend all
ordinations. The Catholic people are going to
have priests or no priests, but not Burschen ^ who
pass as priests." " There is nothing more import-
ant on earth," Ketteier used to say, " than to co-
operate in the formation of pious priests." He
trembled at his first ordinations because of his im-
perfect acquaintance with the candidates and the
unsatisfactory guarantees offered for their future.
His heart was lighter, and the faithful shared his
joy, when the young clerics were safely installed
under the shadow of the episcopal throne. He
visited them frequently, had long heart-to-heart
talks with each one of them, and every year gave
a series of Conferences on the duties of the priestly
State. He spoke with great earnestness and im-
pressiveness, but always as a loving father to his

^ Members of a Burschenschaft or association of students.

SOCIAL REFORM. jg

children, for he was resolved, as he said on one
occasion, " to force the young men by love to be-
come good priests ". All the great festivals he
celebrated in their midst. On Holy Thursday he
waited on them at table and accompanied them on
their visits to the Holy Sepulchres in the parish
churches of the city. He was never absent from
the examinations, which he always followed with
the liveliest interest.

In Order to carry out as closely as possible the
prescriptions of the Council of Trent in regard to
the training of candidates for the priesthood, Ket-
teier established a " Convictorium," a kind of pre-
paratory seminary, in Mainz, and when this became
too small, a second one in Dieburg. " I love to re-
call his many visits to the Convict," writes Mgr.
Forschner. " He often took part in our walks, and
gave US his roomy courtyard to play in. We spent
many a Sunday afternoon there, and the Bishop
often watched us at our merry games from his
window." *

The Bishop's efforts to secure a zealous clergy for
his diocese bore the most abundant fruits. At the
end of the first quarter of a Century of its existence
the Seminary of Mainz could boast of having given
five hundred priests to the Church of God.

After leaving the Seminary the young priests
continued to be the object of the Bishop's deepest
solicitude. All were obliged to pass several examin-
ations in the various brauch es of sacred learning;
pastoral Conferences were inaugurated, and ample
opportunity was given to all to make at least a few

* Forschner, Ketteier, p. 55.

8o BISHOP KETTELER.

days' retreat every year. He could hardly grasp
the idea of a bad priest, so sublime was his con-
ception of the priesthood. He wept when he heard
of the apostasy of a young priest.

When Ketteier came to Mainz there were no Re-
ligious Orders in the diocese. In less than ten
years ample provision was made in this direction.
In 1853 the Brothers of Mary took up the work
of the Catholic education of boys; he reorganized
the Sisterhood of the English Ladies and founded
the School Sisters of Divine Providence and the
Brothers of St. Joseph; with the aid of the famous
novelist, Ida von Hahn-Hahn, whom he had re-
ceived into the Church in Berlin, a House of the
Good Shepherd was opened; Franciscan nuns were
won for house-to-house attendance and care of the
sick, and the Sisters of Charity were gradually
placed in charge of the majori ty of the hospitals.
Capuchins were invited to Mainz, and after a fruit-
less attempt to create mission bands of secular
priests, the Jesuits were recalled in 1858. From
All Saints' Day tili Easter Sunday one mission fol-
lowed the other without Interruption, for the Bishop
was of opinion that no parish should be without this
blessing for more than six years at a time. " The
annual missions have just come to a close," wrote
a correspondent of the Historisch-Politische Blätter
in 1853 ; " the most zealous missionary of all was the
Right Reverend Bishop himself. In many places
he preached every day, and heard confessions from
four or five o'clock in the morning tili nine or ten
in the evening almost uninterruptedly." Periodi-
cal retreats and Conferences for laymen, conducted

SOCIAL REFORM. gl

by such renowned preachers as the Capuchin Father
Cyprian and the Jesuits Roh, Haslacher, and An-
derledy, kept alive the flame of zeal enkindled by
the missions. For the country people the Bishop's
frequent Confirmation tours — he visited even the
smallest parish once every three years — were noth-
ing Short of mission renewals. His sermons for
these occasions were scrupulously prepared tili the
very end of his lif e, and the people flocked in crowds
from far and near to hear him.

After the Confirmation solemnity he visited the
school, examined the children, encouraged the
teachers, dispensed praise and blame as the cir-
cumstances required. Everyone had free access to
him. He had a kind word for all, especially for
the poor and the erring. All looked on him as their
father and friend, and at the end of his life he could
truly say : "There is not a child or poor little granny
in my diocese but knows me " — and loves me, he
could have added with equal justice.

In 1854 Ketteier and the Hessian Minister, von
Dalwigk, signed an agreement regulating the re-
lations between the Church and the State. Al-
though neither this agreement nor a second one
negotiated in 1856, was ever approved by the Holy
See, peace was maintained in the Grand Duchy tili
the days of the unfortunate Kulturkampf, which
laid such rüde hands on many of the Bishop's noblest
works for the salvation of souls, embittered the
closing years of his administration, and Struck
wounds that have not been healed to this day.

Such is a brief sketch of Ketteler's efforts for
the Spiritual regeneration of his flock; but he was

82 BISHOP KETTELER.

mindful also of the promise he had made on the
day of his consecration that he would do all in his
power to relieve their temporal distress as well.
From his Divine Master he had learned the great
lesson that " charity to the soul is the soul of char-
ity " ; like Hirn too he saw the hunger and naked-
ness and wretchedness of the multitude and had
compassion on them. In a memorial addressed to
the Hessian Ministry, 31 December, 1851, relative
to the admission into the Grand-Duchy of Sisters of
Charity, Ketteier lays down his program of prac-
tical social reform in a few pregnant sentences.

In view of the ever-increasing distress and poverty,
in view especially of the growing demoralization of thö
younger generation, I consider it a duty of my calling to
labor to the best of my ability for the amelioration of
conditions in our hospitals and asylums for the poor
and for the erection of institutions for the care of
neglected children. The pious foundations of our an-
cestors have long since become inadequate, and the an-
nual deficits in the poor-funds cannot be met by taxa-
tion — a bürden that will become heavy enough in time
in any event. The people must be made to take an in-
terest in the existing charitable institutions and inspired
with enthusiasm to undertake the founding of new ones.
Not a few labor under the pitiable delusion that the
problem of pauperism is solved by the paragraph on the
Statute Books which requires every Community to take
care of its poor. . . . Distress is nowhere more terrible
than where poverty and sickness meet ; in such cases the
Community can indeed supply a doctor and pay for medi-
cines, but who tends to the sick, who looks after the
cleanliness of their persons and their surroundings, who
furnishes them with proper food and drink? And these

SOCIAL REFORM. 83,

are oftentimes more important factors for their recovery
than physicians and prescriptions. To remedy these
evils infirmaries must be erected not only in the cities
and towns but also in the rural districts, and placed in
Charge of the Sisters of Charity. This is being done in
many parts of Prussia with wonderful success, and I
entertain the firm hope that the Grand-Ducal Ministry
will also prefer a relief System founded on charity to
one dependent on a staff of officials hired by the Poor-
Law Board.

The Grand- Duchy is still very far indeed from being
provided with a sufficient niunber of asyltmis for the
poor, hospitals for the sick and institutions for the
proper education of neglected children. In fact, the re-
sponsible authorities are constantly at a loss what to
do with the boys and girls daily thrown on their care.
Oftentimes they take them from bad parents only to en-
trust them to worse foster-parents, who look on their
charges as a welcome means of bettering their income.
Even the meagre allowance for board must yield them
profit. We are undoubtedly sorely in need of institutions
devoted to works of Christian charity. To call these to
life higher forces than are implied in an increased tax-
rate are required, forces which an Institution like that
of the Sisters of Charity is well calculated to sxmimon
up, for in the hands of the Sisters each one will see his
alms multiplied.^

In spite of the greatest difficulties — ever>^ per-
mission to set a good work on foot had to be wrung
from the Government — the Bishop succeeded in
carrying out his program. Mainz was the first city
to ask the Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul to take
Charge of its hospitals, and before long these angels

' Briefe, p. 227.

84

BISHOP KETTELER.

of charity were to be seen in every lown of the
diocese. A Girls' Orphan Asylum was erected in
Neustadt and a Boys' Protectory in Klein-Zim-
mern. The latter Institution still has the repu-
tation of being one of the best organized of its kind
in Germany. Toward its maintenance Ketteier con-
tributed thousands of florins from his own revenues
every year, and Countess Hahn- Hahn gave the pro-
ceeds of all her literary work.

Many years before the national and international
societies for the protection of girls were thought of,
Ketteier founded a home for girls without employ-
ment and the Society of Our Lady Help of Chris-
tians for the Protection of Servant Girls. The
Pastoral in which he recommended these works to
his diocesans shows how carefully he had studied
every phase of the servant-girl problem.®

Ketteier was one of the most enthusiastic Pro-
moters of the Gesellenvereine — Associations of
Journeymen — the life-work of the saintly Kolping/
At the Fifth Katholikentag, which met in Mainz
in 1851, he made an earnest appeal in their behalf
and suggested the founding of brauch associations
in his diocese. He placed a room in the Seminary
at the disposal of the organized journeymen, sup-

' Hirtenbriefe, p. 248.

■^ When Kolping espoused the cause of the journeymen, his first
plan was to help them by means of confraternities. While at
the University of Munich (1841-42) he took frequent walks with
a long-headed man, to whom he revealed his plans and aspira-
tions. This man pointed out to him the supreme necessity of
providing the journeymen with an Organization calculated to im-
prove not merely their religious but also their economic and so-
cial condition. This long-headed man was Ketteier. Kolping took
his advice and the blessing of God has attended his work.
Gasteiger, Christ.-Soc. Bewegung, p. 13.

SOCIAL REFORM. 8$

plied them with good reading matter, contributed
often and generously to their funds, and remained
their patron and benefactor tili the end of bis life,
One of the Bishop's pet projects was the found-
ing of a Society for the erection of inexpensive but
solid and healthy artisan's dwellings in the indus-
trial centres. From personal examination of hous-
ing conditions in Mainz and Offenbach he knew
that the families of workingmen were either the
victims of real estate speculators or left to the gen-
tle mercies of the facto ry owners. " I call on all
whom God has enabled to Yixe in good, healthy
dwellings," he says in a circular letter which was
never published, " to help their poorer brethren, by
their generous Cooperation, to enjoy the same in-
estimable benefit." Lack of sympathy and the ap-
proaching Vatican Council prevented him from tak-
ing further steps toward the realization of his plans.
But when Dr. Haffner wrote to him in Rome that
he intended to carry out his old project on a small
Scale in Offenbach, he was all afire again. " When
I come back," he wrote, " I shall support the project
with all my heart. ... I am gradually getting too
old to make experiments on a large scale for the
Solution of the social problems, such as I carry
about in my head and my heart. I am thoroughly
convinced, nevertheless, that this will be one of the
great and glorious tasks of the future, however
little it has been appreciated until now. Any op-
portunity to promote even a fraction of this great
work during the remainder of my life will be em-
braced by me with the greatest alacrity. My
whole soul is taken up with the new forms which

86 BISHOP KETTELER.

the old Christian truths will create in the future for
all the relations of the human family, while nothing
depresses me more and paralyzes, as it were, the
wings of my soul, than the conduct of those who
persist in ignoring this divine power of the
Church." «

* Briefe, p. 411.

CHAPTER IX.
Liberty, Authority, and the Church. 1862.

WHILST Ketteier was engaged in the great work
of the Spiritual regeneration of his diocese, his
enemies were by no means inactive. They pressed
on him from all sides and, like the Jews when re-
building the walls of Jerusalem, he was obliged " to
do the work with one hand, and with the other to
hold the sword ". In the public press and from
the platform the Liberal agitators attacked him
with the fiercest animosity. No lie was too brazen,
no calumny too black, no Insinuation too poisonous
for the Frankfurter Journal, the Frankfurter
Zeitung, and the Mainzeitung, to take up and fling
at the great Bishop.

How was it possible for a man of Ketteler's type,
whose life was immaculate, whose every action re-
flected the purity and sincerity of his soul, who
spent himself and was spent in the service of his
fellowmen, to be singled out to be the butt of such
vile assaults? " If you disturb the muddy waters
of a stagnant pool with the vigorous strokes of
your oar," Baron vx)n Hertling answers, " you need
not be surprised if all the vermin, roused from their
sloughy repose, turn angrily upon you." Another,
and perhaps the principal, reason for the antagon-
ism Hertling sees in the elements of which the Li-
beral party was composed in the 'fifties and 'sixties
of the last Century. The old Liberais had passed

88 BISHOP KETTELER.

away. No line of demarcation yet divided the new
Liberal bourgeoisie from the Social Democrats,
organized and disciplined Labor from the rag-tag
of the big cities. The Proletariat was still the will-
ing tool of Liberalism, especially wherever the latter
gave vent to its anti-Catholic instincts. Liberal-
ism gave the order, and the Proletariat carried it
out to suit its own tastes/

So long as his own person was the object of these
attacks and his episcopal dignity was not involved,
Ketteier seldom troubled himself about them. His
daily life, which all who would could observe, was
the best armor of defence. But when the Church or
her august Head or any of her doctrines, institu-
tions or rights were assailed, no champion in the
lists ever leveled lance with truer aim. Neither
the reputed prowess nor the high Station of his foe
ever made him pause : he feared neither the ciam-
ors of the mob nor the f rowns of kings. In him the
words of the old Roman on the " justum et tenacem
propositi virum " were verified : ^

Non civium ardor prava iubentium,
Non vultus instantis tyranni
Mente quatit solida.

With Nehemias he could say : "All these men
thought to frighten us, thinking that our hands
would cease from the work, and that we would leave
off. Wherefore I strengthened my hands the
more." '

When Minister Lamey, of Baden, set up the
tyrannical formula, " Law is the public conscience

1 H ist. -Pol. Blaetter, vol. 124, p. 852 f.

2 Horace, Car. III, 3. ^ \l Esdras 6:9.

SOCIAL REFORM. 89

superior to private consciences," Ketteier, in two
able Pamphlets, vindicated the rights of individual
conscience and relegated the machinery of legisla-
tion to its proper sphere. When Minister JoUy,
Lamey's successor, tried to force an archbishop of
his own choice on the Catholics of Baden, it was
the Bishop of Mainz who defended the electoral
rights of the canons of Freiburg. When a number
of " intellectuals " of Mainz disgraced a public
festival by insulting the Franciscan Order and
habit, Ketteier, in an " Open Letter to the Citizens
of Mainz ", taught them better manners and at the
same time paid a glowing tribute to the Poverello
of Assisi and his devoted sons. When the greatest
pedagogical expert of the day, the free-thinking
Adolf Diesterweg, began his campaign against the
Christian school, Ketteier was the first to give the
alarm and marshal the Catholic forces against him.
In seven Pastoral Letters he took up the cause of
the Holy Father, encouraged the Catholics to be
firm in their allegiance to him and to contribute
generously toward his support when the Pied-
montese usurper robbed him of his patrimony.

It would take us too far afield to give even a
partial account of Ketteler's activity in defence of
the Church, for during the twenty-seven years of
his episcopate he wrote no less than ninety-two pas-
torals, brochures, pamphlets, and longer newspaper
articles of a controversial or apologetic nature, not
a few of the more important ones going through
three and four and even seven editions. How, with
all this, and his intense and unremitting pastoral
solicitude, he found time to write his epoch-making

90

BISHOP KETTELER.

works on the social question, was a subject of won-
der even to those who were intimately acquainted
with him. But it is high time that we take a closer
view of these works themselves.

To Ketteier undoubtedly belongs the merit of
having been the first to estimate at its proper value
the social program of the Liberal party. Be-
fore joining issue with them on this question, how-
ever, he thought it advisable to clear the way by
a general settling of accounts. This he did in the
work entitled " Liberty, Authority , and the Church:
A Discussion of the Great Problems of the Day "
(1862).

The success of the book was instantaneous. Be-
fore the end of the year seven editions were ex-
hausted and it had been translated into French,
Magyar, Spanish, and Czech. " This first larger
work of the gifted Bishop of Mainz," says Pfülf,
" is typical of all his literary activity : the size mod-
erate, at most 260 pages small octavo; short chap-
ters; the arrangement of the parts simple; the dic-
tion clear, in short, smooth sentences; with few and
always brief foot-notes ; intelligible to all, never
fatiguing; not confusing, but illuminating; no un-
healthy extremes, no appeals to the passions, but
clear, logical trains of thought, clothed in words
that could come only of a warm heart." * Some one
has said of Ketteier that if he had not been one of
the greatest bishops, he would have been one of
the greatest journalists of all times."^ This peculiar

* Pfülf, II, p. 161.

^ The Berliner Tageblatt called him a " born Journalist, who al-
ways handled the written word with elegance and dexterity."

SOCIAL REFORM.

91

talent of his is nowhere better displayed than in the
work we are considering. It has been happily
called " a leader in book-form ". Indeed every
Word is a thought, and every thought a telling
practical truth.

The author's purpose in writing Liberty, Au-
thority, and the Church is set forth in a letter to
the Countess Hahn-Hahn : " My little work must
be in your hands by now ; it was a long time appear-
ing. I have handled some thorny questions, on
which it is easy to go astray ; but it seems to me they
must be discussed and cleared up. The press has
taken the lead in the fight against the Church and
is doing fearful service in the cause of the devil.
May God help us to confront it with an equally
powerf ul press devoted to the service of truth ! We
are living in an entirely new world; evil is blazing
new paths ; good must also find new ways to fight
evil : and God will help us in the end, if only we are
not too miserable." °

Ketteier foresaw the approach of the great temp-
est. The lull which followed on the revolutionär^
days of 'forty-eight did not deceive him. The
skirmishes on the banks of the Rhine, in Baden,
Württemberg, and Hesse, were only preludes, re-
hearsals of the decisive battle to be fought on the
sands of Brandenburg. The Catholic forces must
be drawn together; the plans of the enemy must
be fathomed, and united action achieved. The
strongest ally of the Church will be the Catholic
press, if properly organized.^ To the Catholic

® Briefe, p. 273.

^ Ketteier is the author of the famous dictum : " If St. Paul
were alive to-day, he would publish a newspaper." Pfülf, III,
P- 347.

92

BISHOP KETTELER.

press, therefore, and to Catholic publicists the
Bishop chiefly addresses himself. " In order to
have a streng and united Catholic daily press," he
says in the introductory chapter, "clearness is above
all things necessary. Clearness as to our Situation,
the dangers that threaten us, the demands we must
make on the Zeitgeist; clearness as to the true and
the false, the just and the unjust in the aspirations
of the age ; clearness as to our own point of view.
. . . To bring our by no means inconsiderable in-
tellectual forces to bear with advantage on the
enemy, we must know above all ivhat we want."
Hence he chose for his motto the words of St.
Columbanus :

Cognosce causam belli,
Fortem non nescias hostem
Et libertatem in medio arbitrii.
Si tollis hostem, tollis et pugnam ;
Si tollis pugnam, tollis et coronam ;
Si tollis libertatem, tollis dignitatem.^

To aid in bringing about this much-needed clear-
ness, Ketteier examines the favorite catchwords of
the day — progress, enlightenment, liberty, fratem-
ity, equality — in the light of the eternal principles
of divine truth. He is a decided advocate of self-
government and corporate rights ; he combats ab-
solutism and centralization, especially the absolut-
ism practised by the Liberais under the guise of
liberty. He claims for the Church liberty to ad-
minister her own affairs, but protests against con-
founding with this autonomy of the Church athe-

* Columbanus ad Fratrem Epist. IV.

SOCIAL REFORM. 93

ism of the State, disguised under the name of
Separation. He rejects Revolution, and to the State
" by the grace of man " he opposes the State " by
the grace of God ", and the authority ordained by
God for the civil as well as the ecclesiastical order.
He emphasizes the social significance of the Chris-
tian family founded on and hallowed by the Sacra-
ment of Matrimony, and demands liberty and pro-
tection for it against the encroachments of absolut-
ism, especially in the shape of a Godless compul-
sory educational System. The social question in
the more restricted sense of the word is not treated,
but the fundamental principles on which Catholic
social action must be built up are exposed with the
greatest warmth and persuasiveness/

With wonderful clearness and penetration he
lays down the principles that should guide Catholics
in the face of political and social novelties. He
says :

In the first place, Catholics and the Catholic press
must avoid everything calculated to make people believe
that we regard certain institutions, certain social and
political forms of other days, as inaccessible to improve-
ment, or that we praise them unreservedly and hold
them up to future generations as the only possible
remedy for all the ills of society. Christian truths, it is
true, primarily regard the moral progress of man ; but

^ In chap. ^i, Ketteier treated of Freemasonry and its rela-
tions to Christianity. But though he did so " in a polite and
dignified manner," as the editor of the Bauhütte, the leading Or-
gan of German masonry admitted, he became involved in long
controversies with various champions of the masonic idea, which
led to the publication (in 1865) of Ketteler's brochure " Kann
ein gläubiger Christ Freimaurer sein?" five editions of which
were sold out within the short space of three weeks.

94

BIS HOP KETTELER.

social and political progress also depends on them, and
no one can foresee what social or civil transformation
Christianity will efTect in mankind when once it shall
have penetrated and informed all with its spirit.

Secondly, we must distinguish between the genuine
and the counterfeit in the tendencies of the age in which
we live, look to the Christian truths for the Solution of
the great problems of the day, and, by opposing these
luminous truths to the deceptive mirages of the spirit of
the age, piirsue a high and noble ideal.

ßut in Order not to stray from our course, we must,
thirdly, whilst endeavoring, with all the enthusiasm,
all the vigor and all the energy of which we are capable,
to bring about the triumph of the Catholic view of life,
at the same time devote ourselves humbly and whole-
heartedly to the current of Catholic teaching. It is with
the truths of revelation as with the axioms of mathe-
matics, the laws of thought and the maxims of morality.
All these laws, all these fundamental rules are in them-
selves vmalterable ; but how infinitely varied is their ap-
plication. With the same laws which the child observes
in measuring his little slate, the savant computes the
movements of the heavenly bodies. It is the same with
the dogmas of the Church : they are truths revealed by
God, the etemal Truth, and therefore like truth they are
immutable. Whatever is true, is true eternally. Never-
theless they are but foundations, pillars upon which man
must build his personal and his social life, guided by the
hand of that Providence which directs the march of his-
tory. It is our duty to build up the whole life of the
human race in all its manifold relations on the founda-
tion-stones of these divine truths.

But the more anxious we are to become f ellow-builders
of this divine edifice, the more iirmly must we ourselves
take our stand on its God-laid foundations.^"

1° Freiheit, Autorität u. Kirche, 5 ed., pp. 5 ff.

SOCIAL REFORM. 95

In conclusion Ketteier, like another Paul, sum-
mons all the faithful to rise from sleep and arm
themselves for the battle.

For this divine and salutary authority [of the Church]
the spirit of the world wishes to Substitute another.
After robbing them of all true liberty, it would subject
all men to the yoke of its own despotic law. It de-
frauds mankind of the sweet yoke of Christ and the
authority ordained by Him, only to lay on it, with the
aid of legislative majorities and the combined action of
the press, a yoke of its own making.

This tendency has made prodigious headway in the
World, and everywhere we see the enemies of the Church
drawing in their nets in order to deprive Christianity as
soon as possible of all freedom of motion in the future.

The first condition for the development of Christian
life and thought in our day is that the Church, while
remaining subject to the general laws of the State, be in-
dependent, and that to the school be assigned its proper
place in relation to the family, the State, and the Church.
The Chief Opponent of these legitimate Claims is absolut-
ism, old and new, but especially absolutism in its new
dress, modern unbelieving Liberalism.

May the clergy understand the signs of the times and
Champion the cause of God not only with the old weapons
on the old battlefields, but with all just and honest means
at their disposal. Our Christian people must be in-
structed. They must be initiated into the great problems
of the day ; they must be made to see the boundless hyp-
ocrisy of modern Liberalism, to see through the diabolical
plot to draw the school into the Service of anti-Christian-
ity. From every pulpit these questions must be dis-
cussed, and these thoughts developed ; countless news-
papers must spread them broadcast among the people.
What could we not do if we had but a small portion of

gß BISHOP KETTELER.

the zeal of the enemies of God, a zeal which impels
them to rush breathlessly through the world to carry the
poison of their doctrines into the remotest hamlet !

Not only the clergy, however, but all who love Chris-
tianity, must work in the same spirit. In the public
press, in political assemblies, in the stations and walks
of life, whatever they be, in which God has placed them,
with all the means at their conunand, they must fight for
the great interests of mankind. If it is disgraceful to
court idleness when the enemy invades our country and
our home to burn and to pillage, how much more dis-
graceful is it to stir neither hand nor foot while the
highest goods of humanity are called into question !

Now that revolutionary absolutism is aiming at noth-
ing less than to get hold of the reins of sovereign power
in Order to hurl our dear, good people into the abyss of
infidelity and anarchy, is it not more beautiful, more
glorious, more meritorious by far in the sight of God
to take up arms for Christianity against such an enemy,
than, in sluggish repose, to celebrate the high deeds of
our ancestors, who marched to Jerusalem to rescue from
the unbeliever the places made sacred by the Blood of
Christ ? He who remains indifferent in this struggle will
one day at the tribunal of God hear those words ad-
dressed by the householder to the slothful laborers, "Why
stood you there all the day idle?" ^^

^^ L. c, pp. 145 ff. Matt. 20:6.

CHAPTER X.

ChRISTIANITY and THE LABOR QUESTION. 1864.

I. LIBERAL AND RADICAL ATTEMPTS TO SOLVE THE
LABOR QUESTION.

KETTELER'S earnest appeal to the Catholics to
be up and doing, to take a lively interest in the
great questions of the day and to apply to their Solu-
tion the eternal principles of the Christian f aith, was
not made in vain. Edmund Joerg, the editor of the
Historisch-Politische Blaetter, began immediately
to collect material for his masterly History of the
Socio-Political Parties, a work which was for many
years considered the Standard one on the subject.
Baron von Schorlemer-Alst, one of the future pillars
of the Centre Party, consulted with Ketteier on the
best way to organize the Westphalian peasantry.
The Fourteenth Catholic Congress, which met in
Frankfort, 21-24 September, 1863, under the pre-
sidency of Wilderich von Ketteier, adopted a reso-
lution brought in by Dr. Heinrich, a Canon of
Mainz and one of Ketteler's ablest and most zealous
disciples, urging the Catholics " to study the great
social question, which cannot be brought to a satis-
factory Solution except by the light and in the spirit
of Christianity." At the Convention of Catholic
Theologians which began its sessions a few days
later at Munich, Doellinger's motion " that the
clergy devote themselves to detailed scientific study
of the social question," was enthusiastically wel-

98

BISHOP KETTELER.

comed and unanimously carried. Finally, in the
winter oi 1863 Ketteier himself set to work to de-
fine the position of Christianity in regard to the
labor question and at the same time to supply the
nascent Christian social-reform movement with a
sorely needed program.

In Order to form a just idea of the significance of
this work, it will be necessary to cast a rapid
glance at the development of the social-reform
movement in Germany up to 1864. When the gen-
eral distress and famine of 1847, the natural con-
sequence of the uncontroUed spread of Liberal In-
dustrialism, and the Revolution of 1848, which was
as much a social as a political uprising, forced the
social question on Germany, the Liberais, thanks to
the banishment of the Socialist agitators, thanks
also to the listlessness of the Christian and con-
servative elements, as well as to the bold initiative
of Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch,^ got the start in the
race for the leadership of the masses. After sev-
eral futile attempts had been made in Berlin and
other eitles to help the workingman out of his
misery, Schulze-Delitzsch founded the first German
Loan Association in Eilenburg (1851). The ex-
periment proved a success and served as a model
for all similar undertakings. By lecture courses
and cleverly written economic treatises Herr Schulze
popularized his ideas and brought about the rapid
spread of his Craftsmen's Associations. Favored

^ Hermann Schulze, bom i; Delitzsch, Province of Saxony,
1808. In the civil service tili 1852 ; leader of the Progressists
tili his death in 1883. Works : Vorschuss und Kreditvereine als
Volksbanken (1855) ; Die arbeitenden Klassen und das Assozia-
tionswesen (1858) ; Kapitel zu einem deutschen Arbeiterkate-
chismus (ugainst Lassalle, 1863).

SOCIAL REFORM. 99

by the democratic tendencies of the time and the
restless activity of his political friends, the Pro-
gressist wing of the Liberais, who sought to win
popularity through their leader, he soon became
the lion of the day. In a few years he found him-
self at the head of the powerful Federation of
German Workingmen's Associations (1859).

Schulze flattered himself that he could solve the
social problem on the basis of tlhe Manchester»
theory of absolute economic liberty. He made his
own the motto of Quesnay, physician in ordinary to
Louis XV : " Laissez aller, laissez passer, le monde
va de lui-meme." Nothing was more detrimental
in his eyes than to impede the free play of the na-
tural economic laws. Only by looking out for him-
self can the individual be of use to the Community.
In the game of political economy egoism is trump.
Hence he was in principle opposed to all interfer-
ence on the part of the State in the regulation of the
economic relations of men. Self-help, not State-
help, is what the workingman needs, he used to say.
The workingman, in order to help himself, must
be free to exercise any craft, to settle anywhere
within the country and to combine with his fellows
for mutual protection. But effective self-help is
made possible only by education. The masses were
clamoring for bread; Herr Schulze told them,
" First culture, then bread." And forthwith he
and his friends began to flood the country with
Societies for the Education of the Workingman.
By education was, of course, meant a smattering
of culture after the Liberal, anti-Christian pattern.
Once educated, the workingman would be able to

lOO BISHOP KETTELER,

hold his own in the battle of life, or rather the battle
for life against capital.

The whole Liberal worid listened devoutly to
Herr Schulze's theories, believed and adored.
Even certain Catholic Journals echoed his senti-
ments, and " swore no higher," as Edmund Joerg
put it. He was hailed as " King of the Social
Realm," and nothing seemed able to shake his
throne. Then, suddenly, like a thunderbolt out of
a clear sky, Ferdinand Lassalle came down on him
with the " demon-like force of his logic," and with
merciless hands plucked to pieces the laurel crown
an admiring bourgeoisie had presented him with as
the " vanquisher of the red spectre." " Don't let
loose the beast!" had been Schulze's repeated warn-
ing to his foUowers, when the ominous growlings
of the Socialists began to be heard here and there.
But the " beast " was let slip after all and the so-
cial war was on in Germany.

Few men were ever better equipped by natura
and training to lead or rather mislead the masses
than Ferdinand Lassalle (1825 -1864). As an un-
believing Jew he was a match for the dechristian-
ized Liberalism of Schulze-Delitzsch and the Man-
chesterians. He fought them with their chosen
weapon, science without God. To a critical genius,
the like of which it would be hard to find, he joined
uncommon erudition and a recklessness bordering
on brutality. Nothing was sacred to him either in
the World of ideas or the world of sense. Even
Heinrich Heine started back before this apparition
of the spirit of revolutionary Young Germany.
Fresh from the impression of his first interview

SOCIAL REFORM. lOi

with Lassalle in Paris in 1 846, the old scoflfer wrote
to Varnhagen von Ense: " Like myself you have
helped to bury the old order of things and assisted
at the birth of the new. Yes, we have given it
birth and are frightened at it . . . Herr Lassalle
is a genuine and typical son of the new age." Not
even a man like Bismarck could resist the magnetic
attraction of Lassalle's personality. Many years
after the great demagogue's tragic death, Bismarck
said of him in the Reichstag: " He was one of the
, most brilliant and amiable men I ever met."

Lassalle first attracted attention by his successful
management of the famous Hatzfeld divorce case.
Though scarcely twenty years old at the time, he
passionately espoused the cause of the Countess
Hatzfeld, fought it for ten years through thirty-
six Courts, and ended by securing a princely fortune
for the Countess and a yearly income of 5000 thalers
for himself. A purloined casket, which contained
documents of the highest value to the Countess,
played an important part in the final stages of the
suit. Accused of complicity in the theft, Lassalle
defended himself so cleverly that he was trium-
phantly acquitted, his tool, a certain Dr. Mendel-
sohn, having to pay the penalty alone.

After his return from Paris, where he had gone
" to enjoy life in Babylon," to study Greek philo-
sophy and, incidentally, to change his inherited
name Lässal into the more aristocratic Lassalle, he
threw himself body and soul into the revolutionary
movement of 1848, affiliating himself with the
Secret Society of Communists, the precursor of the
Internationale, whose guiding spirits were Marx

I02 BISHOP KETTELER.

and Engels. Repeatedly imprisoned for exciting
the populace against the authorities, he disappeared
for a while from the political stage, devoting his
time to pleasure-seeking in Paris, Switzerland, and
Ostende, and to the composition of his curious phil-
osophical work, Heracliius the Obscure of Ephesus

(1857)-

During the Italian War he tried to gain the good-
will of Bismarck and the Prussian Government by
a brochure entitled The Italian War and Prussia's
Mission, in which he demanded the restoration of
German unity under the hegemony of Prussia. In
1861 he published his most ambitious work, The
System of Acquired Rights. In it he repudiates
every moral foundation of justice and rights, — the
only source of right, according to him, being the
oonsciousness of the generality of the people.

Soon after the appearance of this work Lassalle
began his short but eventful career as a Socialistic
agitator. In numerous labor meetings in Berlin
and Frankfort he eloquently championed the cause
of the " disinherited " and could soon count his
followers by the tens of thousands. In February
of 1863 the Central Committee for the summoning
of a general Congress of German workingmen re-
quested Lassalle to draw up a politico-social pro-
gram for a contemplated labor Organization. This
he did in his Open Reply, the first text-book of
German political Socialism. He laughed to scorn
the idea of harmony between capital and labor; to
the ruling third estate, the bourgeoisie, he opposed
the fourth estate, the Proletariat, as the " rock on
which the Church of the future was to be built ".

SOCIAL REFORM. 103

The two distinctive features of Lassalle's program
are: the assumption of the so-called Insurmount-
able, or Iron Wage Law {Eherne Lohngesetz), ^
and the emancipation of labor from the thraldom
of capital by the Organization of Productive Co-
operative Associations with the help of the State,
In Order to secure a majority in Parliament, with-
out which State aid was out of the question, he de-
manded universal, equal, and direct suffrage.
More " revolutionary " perhaps than his coöperative
associations was his demand for the abrogation of
all indirect taxation.

Very few of Lassalle's socialistic ideas origin-
ated in his own brain. His faith in the ultimate
triumph of the fourth estate he had imbibed from
Hegel ; Marx furnished him with the basis for his
destructive criticism of the Manchester school ; the
theory of the insurmountable wage law he owed to
Ricardo,^ and he was indebted to Louis Blanc for
the idea of coöperative societies. But he cham-
pioned them with such enthusiasm and plausibility
that many of the clearest minds of the day were
partially won over to them. Strange to say, while
Bismarck, as late as 1878, declared in the Reichstag
that he was not convinced of the impracticability of
State-subventioned coöperative associations, Las-

^ " The iron law of wages or Ihe subsistence theory, was the
application to wages of the theory of price being due to the
cost of production. Labor was likened to a commodity and thus
its price could be ordinarily no more than its cost of production,
namely, such wages as would enable the workman to live and
rear a successor." Devas, Political Economy, 3rd ed., p. 473.

3 "The Iron Wage Law," says Prof. Lujo Brentano, "was
formulated by Turgot, made the centre of a rystem by Ricardo
and shouted out into the world by Lassalle." {Frankfurter
Zeitung, 25 Dec, 1907.)

I04

BISHOP KETTELER.

salle had never really taken them seriously, having
proposed them " merely as a sop to the mob who
were eager for something definite, something pal-
pable," as he wrote to his friend Rodbertus. Of
Ketteler's attitude on this question we shall have
occasion to speak hereafter.

The Open Reply was furiously attacked by the
Liberais of every shade. But Lassalle, who said of
himself that " he had taken the field armed with all
the science of the Century," returned blow for blow
with interest, the most telling being the Organiza-
tion of the All gemeine deutsche Arbeiterverein in
May, 1863, and his subsequent election to the
presidency.

Lassalle's most important Socialistic work, Herr
Bastiat-* Schulze von Delitzsch, der oeconomische
Julian^ oder Kapital und Arbeit, gave the death-
blow to the Manchester dogma of self-help. "From
the moment I put this work in the printer's hands,"
Lassalle says in the introduction, " you [Schulze]
may look upon yourself as dead, and from the mo-
ment it has found a few thousand readers, as buried,
too." Time proved his words to have been more
than an idle boast.

In his habits and outward appearance Lassalle
was anything but a labor leader. " He, the Demo-
crat," says Georg Brandes, " dressed like a dandy d
quatre epingles, but tastefully withal. . . . His

* Frederic Bastiat (1801-50), French political economist ardent
Opponent of Proudhon.

5 Julian Schmidt (1818-86), whose uncritical History of Ger-
man Literaiure Lassalle had handled very pungently in 1860;
Schmidt himself was relegated to the ranks of the " literary
mob ".

SOCIAL REFORM. IO5

diners and soupers ranked with the most select af-
fairs in Berlin. There was no contradiction in this,
but rather a contrast such as we might look for in a
rieh and complicated nature, in a Jacobin endowed
with a keen sense of the beautiful, in a revolution-
ary soldier fighting with gorgeously decorated
weapons, in a man who has not wholly put off the
child." «

Radical Socialists distrusted Lassalle even during
his lifetime and after his death openly accused him
of double-dealing. "At first," says Bernhard
Becker, " his agitation was frankly social-demo-
cratic, as is shown by his Frankfort address pub-
lished in the Labor Reader. Little by little, how-
ever, it received a Prussian monarchical flavor. He
drew closer to Bismarck and the Kreuzzeitung. Be-
guiled by his vanity, he had hoped, for a while,
at the head of his labor party to be a match for
the all-powerful Chancellor; but he was soon un-
deceived." What the daring demagogue's ulterior
plans were and what use he intended to make of his
tremendous influence, no one knows. He did not
live to see the disintegration of his party through
the incompetence of his successors and the intri-
gues of the Countess Hatzfeld, and its final ab-
sorption by the Socialistic Labor Party of Bebel and
Liebknecht. He died in Geneva, 31 August, 1864,
of a wound received in a duel with the Wallachian
Bojar Racowitza, his rival for the hand of Helene
von Doenniges.^ His followers made a demigod

* Brandes, Lassalle, ein literarisches Charakterbild, 1877.
"^ Helene von Doenniges died by her own hand, 4 Oct., 191 1,
a few days after the death of her third husband, Sergius

I06 BISHOP KETTELER.

of him and Socialists still celebrate the anniversary
of his death and make pilgrimages to his grave in
the Jewish cemetery in Breslau.

Such is a brief sketch of the man whose name the
Liberais insisted on linking with that of the great
Bishop of Mainz in a wilfuUy calumnious manner.
At the beginning of the Kulturkampf all sorts of
sensational stories on their supposed personal rela-
tions were busily circulated and piously believed.
The N ationalzeitung unblushingly asserted that
Lassalle had been introduced to Ketteier by the
Countess Hahn-Hahn and secretly baptized by him;
that the Bishop had expressed the deepest concern
at the death of the Socialist leader and accompanied
his remains from the Station in Mainz to the boat
that was to bring them to Düsseldorf. Ketteier
categorically denied all these reports. He had
never seen Lassalle, he said, alive or dead, had never
spoken with him, and consequently could not have
baptized him. Countess Hatzfeld had indeed
visited him in Mainz and besought him to take Steps
in Munich to facilitate the marriage of Lassalle and
Helene von Doenniges. This he had refused to
do and there the matter ended.

Previous to this, in January, 1864, Ketteier had
addresed an anonymous letter to Lassalle asking his
advice on a plan he had been entertaining for some
time of founding five small coöperative associations
with private capital, a System which seemed to him
preferable to State Intervention. Lassalle sent an

Schewitsch, a Russian Journalist and revolutionary, who had left
her penniless. This stränge pair had made their home in New
Yorl. for many years.

SOCIAL REFORM.

107

evasive answer and asked the unknown correspond-
ent to reveal himself. Ketteier thereupon sought
the desired information from the well-known his-
torian and political economist, Victor Aime Huber.^
No further correspondence, anonymous or other-
wise, passed between the " Labor tribune " and the
Bishop, but their common Opposition to Liberalism,
political and social, Lassalle's well-feigned if not
real love for the workingman and his " respectful
recognition on several public occasions of the truth
and depth of Christianity," as well as his just ap-
preciation of the Middle Ages, resulted in Ketteler's
judging perhaps too favorably of his intentions and
aspirations.

2. CRITIQUE OF THE LIBERAL AND RADICAL SOLU-
TIONS OF THE LABOR QUESTION.

In the spring of 1864, at the most critical stage
of the controversy between Schulze-Delitzsch and
Lassalle, when all the world wondered what would
be the outcome, when Christian sociologists were
at a loss as to what course to steer and the State
looked on in helpless bewilderment, Ketteler's
epoch-making woik, Die Arbeiterfrage und das
Christentum — Christianity and the Labor Qu.es-
tio n — app ea r ed .

To-day it is nothing unusual for the highest dig-
nitaries of the Church to take an active part in the
discussion of the labor question. It was not thus
fifty years ago. In the introduction to his work
Ketteier deemed it advisable to set forth at length
the reasons which induced him to speak on this

*Pfülf, III, pp. 260-64; 11, pp. 183-85.

I08 BISHOP KETTELER.

matter. His apology is such a splendid monument
to his nobility of mind and heart, and bears such
unmistakable witness to his truly apostolic con-
ception of the episcopal office, that we cannot re-
frain from reproducing it in part at least.

Many will perhaps say that, as bishop, I have no right
to meddle in such matters, or at any rate that I have not
sufficient grounds for doing so. Others will likely say
that I should at most address myself to the faithful.
I share neither of these views. The labor question
touches the material needs of the Christian people : this
consideration alone, it seems to me, gives me the right to
discuss it publicly. Viewed in this light the labor ques-
tion is also a question of Christian charity. What-
ever concerns the spiritual and temporal distress of man
our Divine Saviour has eternally and indissolubly boimd
up with His religion. The Church has everywhere and
at all tünes acted on this principle.

The material and moral improvement of the working
classes — this is the problem under discussion. Various
means have been proposed. What is more important
than to examine these from the Christian point of view?
Can we approve of them? Can we lend, or must we
refuse, our Cooperation ? What special means has Chris-
tianity to off er? All these are questions intimately con-
nected with the Christian religion ; as a Christian and as
a bishop I am entitled to pass judgment on them.

When I was about to receive episcopal consecration,
the Church put this question to me : "Do you promise
to be kind and merciful to the poor, the strangers and
the unfortunate, in the name of the Lord?" And I an-
swered : " I promise." How could I af ter such a solemn
promise remain indifferent in regard to a question that
bears on the deepest needs of such a numerous class of
men? The labor question concerns me quite as much as

SOCIAL REFORM.

109

the welfare of my flock, and far beyond these narrow
limits, as the welfare of all workingmen, who are my
brothers in Christ.

After warning his readers not to expect an ex-
haustive treatment of the labor question — it was too
early in the day for that — Ketteier defines the term
workingman. It applies not only to the laborer
properly so-called, that is the day-laborer and mill-
worker, but to those also who, though conducting
a business of their own, possess so little capital that
their condition is no better than that of the man
forced to live on his daily wages. In this sense
mechanics, small tradesmen and property-holders
must be classed as workingmen.®

" The labor question is essen tially a question of
subsistence. Now there is no doubt that the ma-
terial existence of almost the whole laboring class,
that is the great mass of the Citizens of all modern
States, the existence of their families, the daily
bread necessary to the workingman, to his wife and
children, is subject (in our time) to the fluctuations
of the market and the price of merchandise." ^**.

^ Die Arbeiterfrage und das Christentum, p. 7.

i" Ketteier here attributes the social distress of the wage-
earning classes to the action of the so-called Iron Law of Wages
(See above). So far he agrees with Lassalle and many other
political economists of his day. " The theory of the Iron Wage
Law," H. von Scheel wrote in 1878, " is in fact irrefragable so
long as the presuppositions for it continue ... so long as the
workingmen do not free themselves from the domination of the
capitalists by corporative Organization." (Scheel, Unsere so-
zialpolitischen Parteien, p. iii.) That Ketteier understood the
iron wage law theory in this sense is evidenced by the fact that
he adds the words "in our time" to his definition. {Arbeiter-
frage, p. 17). The means proposed by Lassalle and the So-
cialists for breaking through " this cruel law " are fundamentally
different from those proposed by the Bishop, as will be seen in

HO BISHOP KETTELER.

This is, according to Ketteier, the gist of the labor
question. Unlimited economic liberty and the pre-
ponderance of capital he makes responsible for this
lamentable State of things.

There is much to be said in favor of economic
liberty; but it must be kept within proper bounds.
It has increased production immeasurably ; it has
improved the productions themselves to a certain
extent and by lowering their price has brought
many luxuries within the reach of even the poorer
classes. But by exceeding its proper limits it has
degraded labor to the level of an article of mer-
chandise. Capital daily increases the number of
hired workmen and, aided by the machine, de-
preciates the value of human labor.^^

Ketteier then proceeds to examine the " Liberal "
Solution of the labor question. The remedies pro-
posed by Schulze-Delitzsch and the Manchester
school he divides into three groups : i. Unrestricted
free-trade, unrestricted liberty of exercising any
Graft, and unrestricted right of settlement. 2. Self-
help ; education of the working-classes. 3. Work-
ingmen's associations organized on the principle of
social self-help, such as loan and supply associations.

His criticism of these proposals is sharp, but just.
The first group, he says, will not improve the con-

the text. The Socialists did not officially abandon the iron wage
law theory until 1891 at the Convention of Erfurt, and then only
very reluctantly, because it had served them so well as an argu-
ment against the present System of society.

^^ L. c, p. 20. " Of course," Ketteier remarks in a note,
" I have no intention of attacking the use of the machine as such.
To have made the powers of nature subservient to man is a tri-
umph of mind over matter, which, rightly employed, can free man
more and more from the necessity and slavery of material work."

SOCIAL REFORM. m

dition of the working classes, but rather aggravate
it. Wages will descend to the limits of the strictly
necessary, and even the wages thus reduced will be
the exclusive portion of those who are in füll pos-
session of their physical and intellectutal powers/*
The second group is equally ineffectual. The
real difficulty of the labor question lies in this,
that the workingman cannot, properly speaking,
help himself: he is dependent on others for his
daily sustenance. Besides, " no amount of com-
monplaces about self-help and the dignity of man,
without a firm belief in the dogmas of Christianity
— original sin, Redemption, immortality, eternal re-
ward and punishment — will ever be able to make
the immense bürden of daily labor in the sweat of
his brow rest lightly on the Shoulders of the work-
ingman. Whoever wishes to make use of labor as
means for the moral uplift of man, must seek in the
teachings of Christ the true significance of labor.
Self-help based on the materialistic conception of
life is a f olly : it converts the laboring man's life
into one long unsatisfied hunger. Self-help based
on the Christian conception of life, according to
which labor is not only a necessity, but also a duty,
a punishment for sin and a means of sanctification,
is no new doctrine, no invention of the eighteenth
or the nineteenth Century, but as old as the human
family, inculcated by God Himself and practised
by the Son of God in the Workshop of Nazareth.^*

Associations for the education of the working classes,
inasmuch as they provide trades' schools, will be of some

^^ L. c, p. 34. 13 L. (.., pp. 37 ff.

112 BISHOP KETTELER.

use; they will also belp some exceptionally clever heads
to get on in their trades; but they will be far more in-
jurious than beneficial to the great mass of workingmen,
because they spread infidelity, self-conceit, and love of
pleasure. Religion has no place in the educational
scheme proposed by the Liberal economists, who ignore
Christianity altogether, or, if they do take notice of it,
it is but to give vent to their hatred and contempt. The
majority of workingmen are still in touch with Chris-
tianity and the Church, but the directors of the societies
for their education belong to those classes of our city
population who have long since bidden f arewell to Chris-
tianity and all supernatural revelation. In these circles
all is confusion : a wild chaos of contradictory views on
the reasons of things, from the flattest and grossest ma-
terialism to a certain sentimental deism, is cooked to-
gether into an intellectual hotchpotch. It is hard enougb
for men to be satisfied with the bare necessaries of life —
food, clothing, and dwelling; with their false culture
the Liberais will make this State of things absolutely in-
supportable. The Godless rieh man can at least make
the sorry attempt to fill up the void in his heart by plung-
ing into the enjoyment of his earthly possessions ; but to
rob the empty-handed workingman of God and Christ is
to deliver him up a prey to stupidity or to despair. This
will infallibly be the effect of the Liberal education of
the workingman.^*

Ketteler's predictions came only too true. The
societies which he condemned were responsible for
the wholesale distribution of the atheistical writ-
ings of a Buechner, a Vogt, and a Haeckel, amongst
the working classes. They were the hotbeds of
Socialism. One of their most glorious products
is — Bebel.

1* L. c, pp. 44 ff.

SOCIAL REFORM. II3

The remedies proposed in the third group — loan
and supply associations — have only a relative value,
says Ketteier. At the outset they will secure some
advantages to the workingman, but their value will
decrease in proportion as their number multiplies.
Besides, they contradict the Liberal principles of
self-help and economic liberty and are borrowed
from the much-maligned guilds of the Middle Ages.

Thus what is true in these Liberal proposals is
not new; what is new is not true; and, taken all
together, they cannot in any appreciable manner al-
leviate the distress of the laboring classes."

" The general aim of the Liberais is to bring
about the dissolution of all that unites men or-
ganically, spiritually, intellectually, morally, hu-
manly. Economic Liberalism is built up on me-
chanical rationalistic notions. It is nothing but
an application of the doctrines of materialism to
humanity. The working classes must be reduced
to atoms and then mechanically put together again.
This is the fundamental, the generative principle
of modern political economy. We could not deny
its truth if men stood to each other merely in the
relation of numbers. The highest number con-
sists of Units, of absolutely the same value; place
them where you will, at the beginning, in the
middle, or at the end, they are always in the right
place. If it were the same with men, we could not
do better than divide the whole of mankind on the
five continents into units and then throw these to-
gether in any manner we chose. The combination
would always be perfect; the relations would in-

15 L. c, p. 50.

114 BISHOP KETTELER.

variably be excellent. This pulverization method,
this chemical Solution of humanity into individuals,
into grains of dust of equal value, into atoms
which a puff of wind might scatter in all direc-
tions, is as false as are the suppositions on which
it rests. The fact is that men are not merely num-
bers of the same value. Herr Schulze-Delitzsch
himself admits that absolute social equality is non-
sense and in utter 'contradiction to the natural«
Order." '"

So much for the remedies proposed by Liberal
economists. What proposals does the Radical Party
make? Lassalle formulates them as f ollows : We
must give the worker a share in the property of the
business, so that, in addition to his salary, he may
share in its profits ; we must make a joint-proprietor,
a shareholder of him. To accomplish this, capitcd
is necessary. The workingman therefore needs
capital. This capital must be provided by the State.
The workingmen must strive to obtain a majority
in the Legislative Chambers in order to obtain the
capital required for the Organization of Productive
Coöperative Associations through the ordinary
Channel of legislation.

What shall we say to this proposal? Is it prac-
ticable? Ketteier thinks not. Let us suppose, he
says, that the Radicals have gained the victory;
that they have a working majority in the legislative
body. What will happen in the very first Session?
" Each workingman, each productive association,
each labor union, will claim the right to be heard
first and to be favored before the rest. The floor

16 Op. cit., pp. 33 and 57.

SOCIAL REFORM. 115

of parliament will become a battlefield where the
vilest selfishness and the basest passions will en-
gage in deadly combat. Whoever imagines that
the deliberations of such an assembly could be
carried on with calmness and dignity, that those
workingmen who must necessarily be barred for an
indefinite period from the benefit of State-subsidies
would bear their miserable lot with heavenly pa-
tience tili their turn came, does not know the human
heart and its passions." ^^

But even supposing the plan of the Radicals to
be feasible, the vast amount of capital required to
carry it out would necessitate a serious encroach-
ment upon the rights of private property. Can such
an encroachment be justified? Ketteier answers :

If the Liberais are right, if there is no personal God,
no connexion between laws made by men and the lex
aeterna, the eternal law whose source is the Divine In-
telligence, then the right of private property, together
with all the laws that regulate it, is purely and simply a
matter dependent on the will of man and on the will of
man alone, and I do not see what reasonable objection
could be raised if at some time or other a majority com-
posed of such as possess no property decreed that the
property-holders must lend them a portion of their prop-
erty. Nay more, what is to hinder this majority from
going to greater lengths still and claiming as their own
what had been granted them as a loan? The question
of the nature and origin of the right of private property
will be simply a question of majorities. The majority
will also decide the question of the right of bequeathing
property by will. The decisions of the majority are the

17 Op. cit., pp. 84-7.

Il6 BISHOP KETTELER.

only bases of what is called the modern State. What
grounds have we f or believing that this principle will not
be applied to a revision of the right of ownership? Teil
me why the majesty of the populär will should bow
before the strong-boxes of the opulent Liberais? If it
has the right to trample our conscience in the dust, to
sneer at our faith, to deny God and Christ, it would be
supremely ridiculous to maintain that it must remain
rooted to the spot, as if by enchantment, before the gold
of the millionaire.

If the Liberais on the strength of their principle of
absolute populär sovereignty can decree away the an-
cient rights of the Church and insult our consciences as
they please, other majorities will succeed them who will
take the same stand as they, and with the same right
will not only grant millions to subsidize labor-unions,
but for other things besides.

Viewed from the Standpoint of the Liberais and the
principles taught in the name of the Government in so
many of our universities, the lawfulness of the remedies
proposed by Lassalle cannot even for a moment be called
in question.

The case is different with those who believe in God
and Christ and are therefore convinced that men do not
make laws arbitrarily, but ought to find them in the
principles of right based on the order established by God,
and promulgate no others ; that laws receive their bind-
ing force not from the will of men, but from the etemal
will of God. They do not merely ask, What has the
majority decided? but, What tuas it authorized to decide?
We believe that a decision to help the working classes by
means of subventions such as Lassalle proposes would ex-
ceed the competence of a legislative body and encroach
on a domain over which the State exercises no power. ^^

^^ Op. cit., pp. 72-7.

SOCIAL REFORM.

117

Comparing the proposals of the Liberais and the
Radicals with each other, Ketteier pronounces the
following judgment on them : "Lassalle is right
against Schulze-Delitzsch and Schulze-Delitzsch is
right against Lassalle. Each is right in his critic-
ism of the other; both are for the most part wrong
in the proposals they make to help the working-
man. Both are right when they deny; both wrong
when they affirm. We are not surprised at this;
it is in harmony with the general character of the
spirit of the world, which can indeed criticize, pick
flaws, and tear down, but can not create, build up,
and shape, because it is cut off from all communi-
cation with the Truth and the Life." ^*

3. THE TRUE KEY TO THE LABOR PROBLEM.

After having thus shown that the remedies pro-
posed by the Liberais and the Radicals are inade-
quate to solve the great problems of the day, and,
far from relieving the wretched condition of the
working classes, tend only to aggravate it, Ketteier
asks :

Is there no help, then, for the workingman? Must
we look upon the evils that bear htm down as irre-
mediable? Are we condemned to stand by and see gut
people hastening to decay without being able to tum
their course? Certainly not. Since the Son of God
came down upon earth, the creative spirit of Christian-
ity has solved, so far as this is possible in our present
State, all the great questions that have at different times
agitated mankind, even that ever-recurring one, What
shall we eat? what shall we drink? wherewith shall we

19 Op. cit, p. 62.

Il8 BISHOP KETTELER.

be clothed? It broke the chains of the slaves of old,
who were rated with the beasts of binden, and clothed
them again with human dignity. The anti- Christian
spirit of our day is determined to reestablish ancient slav-
ery under a new form, and, powerfully aided by an un-
believing and materialistic science, is in a fair way to
succeed. By making man descend from matter, it har-
dens his heart against the sufferings of his fellow-men.
We trample upon matter ; we destroy it if necessary,
we kill the animal that is to serve us as food. If man is
nothing but a transformation of matter, an evolution of
the animal or vegetable kingdom, pray teil me the limits
beyond which it will not be permitted to trample him un-
der f oot like a plant, to kill him like a beast of the field,
and where we must begin to reverence and love him as
a human being? Egoism will soon break down the
barriers set up by a shallow humanitarianism, and the
neiv slavery, founded as it will be on the vilest worship
of matter, will become harsher and more cruel than the
old. When the great doctors of the primitive Church
attacked slavery, they said to the masters : " God gave
man dominion over nature and dominion over the beasts
of the field and the fowls of the air; but He did not
give thee the same power over thy f ellow-man ; as man
he is thy equal." On the seventh of February, 1249,
when peace was concluded between the Teutonic Knights
and the converted Prussians, the Papal Legate spoke
these sublime words : " The newly-converted have been
taught that all men are equal, except for sin, and that
sin alone makes them wretched and reduces them to
slavery." Modem materialism seeks to rob man of the
grandeur that lies in this thought by making him the
equal of the brüte ; it boasts of this as if it were a new
revelation, though well aware that, if consequentially
carried out, it must necessarily bring us back to that
State in which man could be treated as a dumb animal.

SOCIAL REFORM.

119

The working class has to bear the whole weight of
these unhappy aberrations. Here it is again the mission
of Christianity to deliver the world from this neo-pagan
slavery by bringing her divine energy and her ever new
life to the task.^°

Before detailing the specific remedies the Church
has to offer for the Solution of the labor question,
Ketteier compares the condition of the working
classes in ancient times and in th& ages of faith.
He says :

Christianity puts man in füll possession and enjoy-
ment of all his powers. It restored to him his in-
dividuality füll and entire. Paganism had no concep-
tion of the worth of man as an individual. For the
Greek and the Roman the rest of mankind had no value.
Even among their own people they did not recognize the
true worth of man. Among the Greeks half of the
nation, woman namely, was looked upon as of inferior
condition. Nor was the dignity of the child better un-
derstood. It could be sold or put to death for a variety
of reasons. The man was altogether absorbed by the
Citizen, and his value was measured by his degree of use-
fulness to the Conmionwealth. Man as such could
hardly be said to exist. . . . ^^

The enlightened Greeks, whose culture is still held up
to US as a model, despised manual labor. The free-
born among them regarded the exercise of a trade as
dishoiiorable and degrading. The idea of self-help by
means of work was unknown to them. Manual labor
was left to the slaves. The gods of Greece, whom the
most populär poet of Germany has so highly extolled,^'^

20 Op. cit., pp. 100-103. 21 Op. cit., p. 120.

22 Ketteier alludes to Schiller's well-known poem Die Goetter
Griechenlands.

I20 BISHOP KETTELER.

had no heaxt for the laborer and the slave. The Greek
philosophers taught that slavery was an Institution
founded on the natural order, and as such could not be
abolished. They had not even the faintest idea that the
great body of toilers could be elevated to the position
they occupy under the Christian dispensation. In their
eyes the slave was a chattel like any other, a part of
their private property, an instrument at the service of the
free man. The most celebrated were of opinion that
every slave was radically corrupt and knew no other mo-
tives of action than fear and sensuality. The ideal Plato
himself counsels his disciples to treat their slaves harshly,
to chastise them frequently; and he took contempt of his
slaves to be a sign of a well-bred man. In such esteem
was the workingman held when the gods ruled in Greece.
It was the same in Rome. The Romans shared the
views of the Greeks on slavery and work. In the be-
ginning agriculture and certain trades were indeed in
honor among them ; but this State of things was of short
duration, and in the end all manual labor, agricultiire,
and trades, were lef t to the slaves, who were treated even
more horribly and inhumanly than were the slaves of
Greece. The cruelties committed day after day in every
part of the Roman Empire would revolt the civilized
World to-day, because the hearts of men have been re-
fashioned by the breath of Christianity. The sole reason
for a slave's existence was the satisfaction of the lusts of
his master. And so it came to pass at last that the Ro--
man knew no greater pleasure than to witness those
bloody festivals in the arena at which slaves were torn to
pieces by famished lions and tigers, or drained each
other's blood in gladiatorial combats — to contemplate
their gaping wounds, to revel in their agony, to hear their
death-rattle, this was the Roman's holiday. Such ivcls
the condition of the workingman under the gods of Rome.

SOCIAL REFORM. 121

His lot was not more enviable amongst the other pagan
peoples, the ancient Germans not excepted. Amongst
these also work was the duty of the slaves. War and the
chase were the occupations of the freemen, who, when
not thus employed, gave themselves up to sluggish idle-
ness or played and drank the time away. Even agricnl-
ture was despised in pagan Germany. The fields were
cultivated by the women and the slaves.

Amongst the Jews alone was the case dififerent — an
additional proof of the providential mission of this peo-
ple. We find a kind of slavery here also; but just as
the Jewish people was set in the midst of the Gentiles
as a witness and a montmient to the mercies of God, an-
nouncing to the world the Coming of the Saviour who
was to free both soul and body f rom the chains of slavery,
so also was slavery itself to a certain extent abolished
among them, despoiled at any rate of its pagan acces-
sories of degradation and cruelty. Jewish slavery held
as unexampled a position in the ancient world as did the
Jewish conception of labor. The Jewish master worked
side by side with his slave; he allowed him rest on the
Sabbath and was obliged to grant him certain rights.

From this sad state Christianity freed the world. It
did not merely deliver the souls of men from the bonds
of sin and error, but completely changed the condition
of the working classes. The great truth proclaimed in
Holy Writ, " God created man to His own image ; to
the image of God He created him," was so deeply buried
under the degradation and misery of the great mass of
mankind, the slaves, that all remembrance of it had
vanished. Jesus Christ proclaimed it anew to all men,
even to the poorest and most unfortunate. With His
divine band He broke the chains that had been so tightly
riveted that they were looked upon as part and parcel of
the nature of things, as a condition native to man; and
forthwith they began to fall off from the hands and feet

122 BISHOP KETTELER.

they had bound so long. More wonderful still than the
fact of this deliverance was the manner of it. Moehler
justly remarks that perhaps the most remarkable feat ac-
complished by Christianity was this, that it brought about
the emancipation of the slaves without their having made
a Single attempt to procure it by violent means. Ec-
clesiastical history does not record even one instance in
which the preaching of the Gospel caused the slaves to
revolt against their masters or to rid themselves violently
of them. St. Paul shows us by a typical example how
Christianity went about its work of emancipation. Ones-
imus, a slave, after robbing his master, fled to Rome,
where he was converted to Christianity. St. Paul sent
him back to his master with an epistle in his favor which
may well be called the anticipated declaration of freedom
to all the slaves in the new Christian empire. If the
Christians were supposed to treat their slaves as St.
Paul directed Philemon to do, the peaceful end of slav-
ery could not be far off. " If thou count me a partner,"
the great apostle wrote, " receive him as myself ; not now
as a slave, but instead of a slave, a most dear brother,
especially to me, but how much more to thee." And
these were not vain words : " Trusting in thy obedience,"
St. Paul could add, " I have written to thee, knowing
that thou wilt also do more than I say." ^^ The Chris-
tians did in fact do more. They treated their slaves not
only as brothers in Jesus Christ, but gradually gave them
their liberty also. Thus Christ overcame slavery by the
etemal truths which He proclaimed. The externa!
traces of a malady disappear in proportion as the body
recovers its health. The same process took place in
humanity under the influence of Christianity. God has
placed a spiritual, a heavenly leaven in the world which
gradually raises and leavens the whole mass. He heals
men from within, because all extemal ills have their

23 Philemon, i6, 17, 21.

SOCIAL REFORM. I23

source within ; He heals the soul first, because the soul
is the seat of all the bodily ills with which man is af-
flicted. Thus in the course of the centuries the chains
of slavery were loosed by a wonderful internal, spiritual
process. During the Middle Ages its reign had ceased
in almost every Christian State. Christian workingmen
and Christian industry replaced the slaves of paganism,
and a conception of labor and its dignity underwent such
a transformation that what was a disgrace to the heathen
became a source of virtue and honor to the Christian.^*

What Christianity accomplished during the early
centuries of its reign, it still has power to accom-
plish to-day. It solved the most tangled problem
handed on to it by ancient paganism, the problem
of slavery, by informing mankind with its divine
ideas and infusing into it its spirit of charity, It
will also solve the vexed questions of our day, not
so much by having recourse to more or less me-
chanical remedies, as by enlightening the minds and
regenerating thehearts of men,by infusing its spirit
into them, without which even the best reform meas-
ures will be futile.^^ True political and social wis-
dom will return in the wake of divine wisdom, and
then governments and legislative bodies will see
their way to promoting a wholesome reform of
our present social and economical conditions. Thus

2* Op. cit, pp. 149-156.

26 " I am well aware that in this domain (i. e. social reform)
all the desired reforms cannot be realized by State intervention
alone. To the church and the school there is left a wide field for
independent action, by which the legislative tneasures must be
supported and fructified if they are to serve their purpose fullyP
(William II, at the opening of the Council of State, 14 Feb.,
1890.)

124

BISHOP KETTELER.

Christianity alone holds the true key to the social
question.^®

4. COOPERATION OF THE CHURCH IN THE SOLUTION
OF THE LABOR PROBLEM.

What has the Church to offer the workingman?
In the first place, says Ketteier, she will continue
her solicitude for the aged and the invalid. Chris-
tian charity will, as it has done in the past, found
retreats for the poor, the sick, the incurable, and
gather the orphans under her protecting wing.
This peculiar province of the Church will never
be taken f rom her. Efforts are indeed being made,
and greater ones will be made in after times, by
her enemies, in spite of their vaunted doctrine of
self-help and their contempt for almsgiving, to com-
pete with her in this field or to dispossess her alto-
gether; but without the aid of the supernatural
graces and gifts with which God has endowed His
Church it will be impossible to bestow that loving
care on the poor invalid workingman which alone
can make life in an asylum bearable and in some
measure a Substitute for the home. The daily and
hourly care of the sick is such a trying task that
human nature, left to itself, cannot bear the strain.
Even parental and filial love oftentimes succumbs
under this bürden. ^^

In this connexion Ketteier makes a remarkable
Suggestion. " The Church lands appropriated by
the State during the secularization era are of very
great value. Their revenues are helping to replen-

2« Op. cit., pp. 104-106.
2'^ Op. cit., pp. 106-111.

SOCIAL REFORM.

125

ish the public treasury and indirectly to lighten
the bürden of taxation. The secularization was a
foul robbery committed in total disregard of all the
principles on which the right of ownership is
founded. The Church has for all times relin-
quished her claims to her former possessions. Sub-
sidiarily, however, the poor have a right to the
property of the Church, for, according to Canon
Law and the intention of the donors, the patri-
mony of the Church is at the same time the patri-
mony of the poor. Thus it would be a kind of
atonement for this spoliation if the secularized
property were converted into a poor-fund by the
State. The good that might be done in this way
is incalculable. Though this idea may appear to
be anything but in harmony with the spirit of the
age, I have given expression to it here because of
the undeniable truth underlying it." ^^

In the second place the Church offers the work-
ingman the inestimable benefit of the Christian
family, together with the rock on which it is built,
the Sacrament of Matrimony. To preserve to the
children of the working classes the Christian fam-
ily, the Christian parent-heart, is an indispensable
condition for the Solution of the labor problem.
True, the Christian family does not guarantee
higher wages to the laborer; but it gives his wages
a far higher value. The Christian family is the
most necessary of all organizations, an Organiza-
tion founded by God Himself, without which all
others, call them what you will, have no value for
the workingman. Its sanctifying influence pre-
28 Op. cit., p. 15.

126 BISHOP KETTELER.

serves him even before his birth, and afterward in
the days of his youth and of his manhood, from the
dreadful consequences of vice. In times of dis-
tress, of sickness, of want of work, what can re-
place the inexhaustible love and spirit of sacrifice
of a truly Christian wife, the tender devotion of
sons and daughters who believe that the command-
ment to honor father and mother is a divine com-
mandment with a divine sanction?^^

The third boon held out by the Church to the
workingman are her truths and precepts, and with
them true culture of the mind and the heart. The
truths of Christianity give him a deep insight into
his dignity as man and teach him to rate his daily
toil higher than the material price paid for it. Far
from being encouraged to neglect the concerns of
life, he is reminded that sloth is one of the Seven
Capital Sins ; that he must give a strict account of
his stewardship over the goods entrusted to
him ; that the man who thinks he is on earth " to
eat and to drink and be drunk," and nothing more,
" shall be beaten with many stripes," that, whether
he have five pounds or only one pound, he must
make the most of his opportunity. In season and
out of season she strives to impress on him the su-
preme necessity of temperance, self-denial, con-
tinence, and all those other virtues whose observance
cannot but be conducive to his temporal as well as
his eternal well-being and without which " self-
help " is a hoUow phrase.^"

In the fourth place the Church offers her power-
ful Cooperation for the Organization of labor.

2ö Op. cit, pp. 117-119. 3 0 0p. cit., pp. I2i-i3a

SOCIAL REFORM. I27

The fundamental characteristic of the labor move-
ments of our day, that which gives them their import-
ance and significance and really constitutes their essence,
is the tendency, everywhere rife among the workingmen,
to organize for the purpose of gaining a hearing for their
just Claims by united action. To this tendency, which is
not only justified but necessary under existing economic
conditions, the Church cannot but gladly give her sanc-
tion and support.

It would be a great folly on our part if we kept aloof
from this movement merely because it happens at the
present time to be promoted chiefly by men who are
hostile to Christianity. The air remains God's air though
breathed by an atheist, and the bread we eat is no less
the nourishment provided for us by God though kneaded
by an unbeliever. It is the same with unionism: it is an
idea that rests on the divine order of things and is es-
sentially Christian, though the men who favor it most do
not recognize the finger of God in it and often even tiim
it to a wicked use.

Unionism however is not merely legitimate in itself
and worthy of our support, but Christianity alone com-
mands the indispensable Clements for directing it prop-
erly and making it a real and lasting benefit to the work-
ing classes. Just as the great truths which uplift and
educate the workingman — his individuality and personal-
ity — are Christian truths, so also Christianity has the
great ideas and living forces capable of imparting life
and vigor to the workingmen's associations. It is not
without a deeper reason that we apply the word body to
certain associations. The body represents the most per-
fect Union of parts bound to one another by the highest
principle of life, by the soul. Hence we call such asso-
ciations bodies, or corporations, which have, so to speak,
a soul that holds the members together. Now it is just
here that Christian associations differ from all others.

128 BISHOP KETTELER.

The immediate end of an association may be purely ma-
terial, a matter of every-day lif e ; if the Clements of
which it is composed are Christian, it will receive through
them a higher bond of union. . . . The associations so
much in vogue to-day have no other bond of union than
their own immediate objects. Supply-associations furn-
ish their members with cheaper bread ; loan-associations
offer them capital at a lower rate of interest, etc. Selfish-
ness with its constant tendency to encroach on the rights
of others threatens at any moment to prevent the realiza-
tion of this common object. When, on the contrary, men
Combine in a Christian spirit, there subsists among them,
independently of the direct purpose of their association,
a nobler bond which, like a beneficent sun, pours out its
light and warmth over all. Faith and charity are for
them the source of life and light and vigor. Before
they came together to attain a material object, they were
already united in this tree of life planted by God on
the earth ; it is this spiritual union that gives life to
their social union. In a word, Christian associations are
living organisms; the associations founded under the
auspices of modern Liberalism are nothing but agglomer-
ations of individuals held together solely by the hope of
present mutual profit or usefulness.

The future of unionism belongs to Christianity. The
ancient Christian corporations have been dissolved and
men are still zealously at work trying to remove the last
remnants, the last stone of this splendid edifice: a new
building is to replace it. But this is only a wretched
hut — built on sand. Christianity must raise a new
structure on the old foundations and thus give back to
the workingmen's associations their real significance and
their real usefulness. ^^

31 Op. cit., pp. 130-136.

SOCIAL REFORM. I2q

The associations especially recommended by Ket-
teier to the sympathy and support of all who have
the Christian Solution of the labor problem at heart
are the Craftsmen's Unions and the Journeymen's
Associations. The former, then still in their in-
fancy, were doomed to be but short-lived, owing to
lack of support on the part of the Government ; the
latter, founded, as we have said elsewhere, by
Father Kolping in 1845, Ketteier justly calls a
Catholic contribution to the Solution of the labor
question, and he prophesies a glorious future for
them.""

In the fifth place Ketteier proposes the Organiza-
tion of Coöperative Associations as one of the most
effective means of relieving the working-classes.
He placed the greatest hopes in the ultimate suc-
cess of the coöperative idea if supported by Chris-
tian charity. At the same time he did not shut his
eyes to the very serious difficulties standing in the
way of its realization.

It is superfluous [he says] to insist on the importance
of Productive Associations of Workingmen. We can-
not foresee whether it will ever be possible to make the
whole labor world, or even the bulk of it, share in the
benefits they ofifer. But there is something so grand in
the idea itself that it deserves otir sympathy in the high-
est degree. So far as it is realizable it holds out the
most palpable Solution of the problem under discussion,
assuring as it does to the workman, over and above his
daily wages, which competition has practically reduced
to a minimum, a new source of revenue. Lassalle wishes

»2 In 1907 there were 1161 societies with a total membership
of 193,000. ^

I30

BISHOP KETTELER.

to carry out this project with the help of capital ad-
vanced by the State. This expedient, at least if carried
out on a large scale, appears to us, as we have said be-
fore, an unjustifiable encroachment on the rights of pri-
vate property and impossible of realization without the
gravest danger to the public peace. Professor Huber ^^
relies partly on the initiative of the workingmen them-
selves, partly on private donations, and is in favor of be-
ginning ever3rwhere on a small scale. The question of
coöperative societies is, therefore, primarily a question of
funds. The great manufacturers of to-day are rieh capi-
talists or companies with millions at their command.
The enterprises of the poor workingmen with little or no
capital will be literally crushed and trampled upon by
the giant business concerns which are becoming more nu-
merous every day. Where can the workingmen get the
necessary capital to compete with them? If Lassalle' s
plan is unjustifiable and impracticable, as we are con-
vinced it is, and if there are no other means available
than those proposed by Huber, one were inclined to
give up the whole idea of coöperative production as a
beautiful but harren day-dream, or, at any rate, to cast
aside all hope of realizing it to such an extent as would
bring relief to any considerable part of the vast army of
wage-earners. . . .

As often as I weigh these difficulties, the certainty and
the hope spring up within me that the forces of Chris-
tianity will take hold of this idea and realize it on a
grand scale. Vast sums will be required, and 1 am far
from entertaining the notion that the working-classes will
be suddenly and everywhere relieved from their distress
by this means. But I see this consvunmation in the
future and hope that Christian souls will begin to lay

33 There is an excellent sketch of this eminent Christian eco-
nomist in Janssen's Zeit und Lebensbilder, Vol. I ; cf. Goyau,
L'AUemagne religieuse ; le Protestantisme, pp. 191-193.

SOCIAL REFORM. I^I

the füundations for it, now in one place, now in another.
Christianity is a force that works from within, advances
slowly, but infallibly succeeds in accomplishing the most
sublime and unlooked-for things for the welfare of man-
kind. No doubt many things will happen before the
influence of Christianity has gained sufficient ground to
attain the desired end. It took centuries before the an-
cient Romans could be induced to set their slaves free.
Perhaps many a Schulze- Delitzsch will have to appear
on the scene and announce salvation to the working-
classes, before the last tower built by the last of them
crumbles to pieces and brings home to the workingman
that he has been duped once more and that his hopes were
vain. Perhaps the world will even have to give Las-
salle's program a trial. The disastrous consequences
sure to result from this dangerous experiment, especially
if it is directed by unscrupulous demagogues, will con-
vince it that the (Social-) Democrats are just as power-
less to eure it of its ills as are the Liberais, because their
philanthropical ideas, too, are built on the quicksands of
human speculation and not on the rock of Christianity.
We cannot, therefore, teil how and when Christianity
will help the working-classes by means of coöperative so-
cieties. However, we do not doubt that it will one day
realize what is true and good and feasible in the idea.
It is true, at the present moment the class that could
do most in this matter, viz. the rieh merchants, the cap-
tains of industry, and the moneyed men generally, is for
the most part estranged from Christianity and committed
body and soul to the principles of Liberalism. But
Christianity counts faithful followers here, too, and its
enemies need not always remain such. There was a time
when the ancient patrician families of Rome were far
removed indeed from Christianity; when a Roman
matron daily employed hundreds of slaves to adom her
person; but a time came when the children of these

132

BISHOP KETTELER.

families liberated their slaves, with their fortunes cov-
ered Italy with institutions for the poor, and even sacri-
ficed their lives for the love of Christ. Christianity is
so wonderful ! Its enemy of yesterday falls down to-
day at the f oot of the Gross, and the son gives his blood
for the love of the God whom his f ather blasphemed !
The resources of Christianity are so boundless that, if
God wills to incline the hearts of Christians to these
ideas, the capital required for the creation of productive-
associations will be gradually provided. There are two
Systems of taxation. The one is used by the State, the
other by Christianity. The State levies taxes by f orce — it
makes revenue-laws, draws up tax-rolls, sends out tax-
collectors; Christianity levies taxes by the law of char-
ity ; its assessors and collectors are f ree-will and con-
science. The States of Europe are staggering under the
huge burdens of public debt in spite of their compulsory
System of taxation, and their financial embarrassments
have given birth to that mystery of iniquity — gambling on
the stock-exchange with all its attendant moral corrup-
tion. Christianity, on the contrary, with its System of
taxes, has always found abimdant means for all its
glorious enterprises. Look at our churches and mon-
asteries, our charitable institutions for the relief of every
himian ailment and distress, our parishes and bishoprics
spread over the surface of the globe; think of all the
money that has been gathered for the poor, for our schools,
our Colleges and ancient universities ; and remember that
all this with scarcely an exception is the result of per-
sonal sacrifice, and you will have some idea of the life-
giving power of Christianity. What Christianity was
in times past, such it still is to-day. If we were to count
up all the works of charity founded and supported by
voluntary contributions during our own lifetime, what a
vast sum should we not arrive at? During the last five

SOCIAL REFORM. . 133

years ^* alone the Catholics of the world have sent
twenty million florins to the Holy Father. How can we,
in the face of these facts, suppose that Christianity will
not be able to raise the necessary funds for setting on
foot enterprises for the benefit of the working-classes ?

After describing the grave dangers to the faith
and morals of the workpeople from our present
capitalistic industrial System, and how they might
be obviated by coöperative production, Ketteier
concludes :

In our day, just as in former days, there is no dearth
of men who feel impelled to do good to their f ellow-men.
It seems to me there could hardly be anything more
Christian, more pleasing to God, than a society for the
Organization of coöperative associations on a Christian
basis in districts where the distress of the work-people
cries loudest for relief. 1

Above all things, it is necessary that the idea of co-
öperative associations and the ways and means of or-
ganizing them be examined on every side. For only
when their importance for the working-classes shall have
been recognized on all hands, not least of all by the
people themselves, and their feasibility demonstrated,
can we hope that the attempts to establish them will be
multiplied.^'*

Although Ketteier does not expressly treat of the
duties of the State in regard to the working-classes
(this question did not enter into the scope of his
work) , he insists on the right of the workman to the
protection of the civil power and repeatedly gives'

3* 1859-1864. Ketteier was one of the most zealous promoters
of the collections for the papal treasury. Cf. Pfülf, II, pp. 4 ff.
88 Op. cit., pp. 138-148.

134

BISHOP KETTELER.

expression to his deep regret that legislative bodies
have frequently displayed not only culpable in-
difference, but also downright hostility, to the just
demands of the largest section of the body politic.
" Whoever works for another," he says, " and is
forced to do so all his life, has a moral right to
demand security for a permanent livelihood. All
the other classes of society enjoy such security.
Why should the working-classes alone be deprived
of it? Why should the toiler alone have to go to
his work day after day haunted by the thought:
' I do not know whether to-morrow I shall still have
the wages on which my existence and the existence
of my wife and children depend. Who knows?
perhaps to-morrow a crowd of famished workmen
will come from afar and rob me of my employment
by underbidding me, and my wife and children must
beg or starve.' The wealthy capitalist finds pro-
tection a hundredfold in his capital — competition
is scarcely more than an idle word for him — but the
workman must have no protection : hence the fierce
abuse so persistently heaped on the trade-guilds. I
am far from pretending that the guild System had
no weak points. Authority has often been abused;
but it has not on that account been abolished.
Many abuses, too, crept into the trade-guilds for
want of proper supervision and timely adjustment
to new conditions ; but the system itself rested on a,
right principle, which should have been retained,
and could have been retained without detriment to
a healthy development of industrial liberty." °'

5' Op. cit, pp. 26 ff.

SOCIAL REFORM. 135

Later on, as we shall see, Ketteier found occasion
to particularize certain urgent reforms which the
State must help to carry out.

We cannot bring this imperfect analysis of
Christianity and the Labor Question to a more
fitting dose than by using the author's own words:
" What I have written is addressed not only to
Catholics, but to all who have a heart for the work-
ing-classes and share our faith in Christ, the Son
of God . . I am convinced that the great social
questions, of which the labor question is only one,
would be easy to solve if it were not for the un-
happy schisms that divide Christendom. May God
restore to us what we all still profess when we
pray : ' I believe in one holy Catholic Apostolic
Church.' " "

The publication of Christianity and the Labor
Question was an event whose importance cannot be
overestimated. Within a few months three edi-
tions were called for.^^ Twenty-five years after-
ward, Windthorst wrote: " We all venerate Bishop
von Ketteier as the champion and doctor of Catholic
social aspirations. . . It will ever redound to our
glory that it was a prince of the Catholic Church
who, at a time when Economic Liberalism con-
trolled public opinion, had the courage to raise the
banner of Christian social reform." ^° " The book
has made the rounds of Germany," the Mainzer
Journal could write, 19 June, 1864, " ^^^ because
of the deep earnestness with which it treats the

*^ Op. cit, p. 160.

'8 It was translated into French by Ed. Cloes, of Liege, in i86g.

'* Introduction to the 4th ed., Mainz, 1890.

136

BIS HOP KETTELER.

labor question and the clear flashes of light it throws
on the most perplexing parts of this most perplex-
ing question, has won the approbation even of its
enemies. . . We have no doubt that very many, es-
pecially among the clergy, the public officials and
business men, as well as among the aristocracy, will
be impelled by the study of this book to lend a
willing hand, each in his sphere, for the ameliora-
tion of our wretched labor conditions." *^

The hope here expressed was not vain. A num-
ber of excellent Catholic pamphlets and books on
the social question were published within the next
few years. It was recognized on all hands that a
new element had been introduced into the discussion
of the labor question which could not be ignored,
and that Liberalism had to reckon with an Oppo-
nent that bade fair in time to become more formid-
able even than Lassalle, because he had truth and
singleness of purpose on his side. As early as 1869
Schulze-Delitzsch complained of the " rapid spread
of Ketteler's ideas in the Rhineland."

Nevertheless, Ketteler's ideas were in many re-
spects so new, so far ahead of the times ; his pro-
posals so daring and his declaration of war against
Liberalism so open, that comparatively few even in
the Catholic camp had the courage to follow his
lead then and there. Some looked upon the labor
question as " the question of the future," and pre-
ferred not to wrestle with it just then. To others
it was a spectre which had better be let alone : they
themselves, at any rate, had no wish to drive it
away. However, sincere and touching proofs of

40 Pf Ulf, II, p. 189.

SOCIAL REFORM. I37

appreciation were not wanting at the time. Letters
of congratulation and thanks poured in on the
Bishop from all sides, from prelates and wide-
awake curates, from university professors and sim-
ple workingmen, from Catholics and Protestants.
A Protestant gentleman of Hamburg, President of
the German Craftsmen's Union, hastened to thank
him in the name of all his associates for his fear-
less defence of the rights of the workingman and
for having demonstrated to the world in his own
person " that Christian charity knows no bounds."
" The reading of your splendid book," a Protestant
whitewasher wrote from Berlin, " has been a real
refreshment to me. I shall continue to study it
..." A Catholic rope-maker duly acknowledges
" the genuinely Christian efforts of His Grace to
help the working-class," but he hasn't much faith
in modern Christian charity, and doesn't expect too
much help from that quarter. He ought to know;
for he had struggled for twenty years to keep above
water, but had gone down in the end without any
one having made an attempt to save him. His sad
Story occupies eight closely-written foolscap pages.
Perhaps the most touching letter of all is that of
a Protestant mechanic of Breslau. " My Sunday
work to-day," he writes, " consisted in reading your
Labor Question and C hristianity , and I wish to end
it by answering a few of the questions you put.
The disintegration of the family is the cause of our
ever-increasing social misery. . . We are living
very much like heathens : we do not fulfil the pur-
pose for which God created us ; therefore we must
perish. . . If I cannot see you in this world, I wish

138 BISHOP KETTELER.

to visit you in the next and thank you for being a
lover of men."

These and numerous other heartfelt effusions in-
demnified Ketteier for the vile abuse heaped upon
him from other quarters. Thus the Liberal Jour-
nals persistently accused him of inflaming the masses
with hatred and contempt for the existing order of
things and of championing the cause of Socialistic
Radicalism. In 1871 this charge was openly re-
peated in the German Reichstag by a spokesman
of the National-Liberals. Ketteier replied : "I
cannot expect Herr Fischer to give himself the
trouble of reading my book. But in case he should
feel inclined to take cognizance of its Contents, I
shall be happy to present him with a copy. He will
certainly find no * courting of the masses,' nor
' speculation on the instigation of the masses ' in it.
I am a Christian and a priest and in this double
capacity I have a double right not to remain indif-
ferent to the weal and woe of the working-classes.
Therefore I reject with disdain any attempt to In-
terpret my sympathy for the people as ' a specula-
tion on the instigation of the masses.' " *^

The Social- Demokrat, the leading Socialist Or-
gan, laughed at the Bishop for " trying to achieve
great things with small means," but was delighted
nevertheless to see that he stood up for universal
suffrage, even though he did so with a reservation.

What did Lassalle himself think of Ketteler's
book? On 23 May, 1864, a Socialist celebration
took place in Ronsdorf, near Barmen ; about 9CX)
workmen had come together mainly to hear and see

<i Pfülf, II, p. 196.

SOCIAL REFORM. I39

Lassalle, who, as usual, completely carried them
away by his eloquence. After outlining the work
done by the General Association of German Work-
ingmen, he devoted fuUy thirty minutes to Ketteier,
" a man," he said, " who is regarded as a saint on
the banks of the Rhine," who "has for years devoted
himself to scientific research," and whose words
" are not only listened to with respect as those of
a savant, but with reverence." " Thereupon," so
an eye-witness afterward informed the Bishop,
" Lassalle read several passages from your book.*'
. , . He was in ecstasy, and the audience applauded
vigorously ; some one even cried : ' Long live the
Bishop of Mainz.' . . . True, he continued, you had
raised two objections against his proposals. . . But
your first objection was not founded. . . . Your
second did not exist for him and the audience. . . He
did not breathe a syllable about the capital remedy
proposed by you for the ills of the laboringman and
of all men — Christianity. In fact throughout his
discourse he never once mentioned religion or
morality." *^ Evidently Lassalle held Ketteier in
high esteem, but could not resist the temptation to
make capital out of his book for his own cause.

Two years later, Ketteier had occasion to give
expression to his opinion of Lassalle and the As-
sociation founded by him. Three Catholic work-
men of Dünwald (near Cologne), asked him
whether they could in conscience continue to belong

*2 The passages were Ketteler's criticism of Economic Liberal-
ism and his description of the degradation of labor.

*3 Raich, Briefe, pp. 296-298; Pfülf, II, pp. 192 flF. ; Goyau,
op. cit., pp. xxxv-xxxviii.

I40 BISHOP KETTELER.

to the General German Workingmen's Association.
Though in the midst of a Confirmation tour, he sent
a long letter in reply, which breathed the tender-
est love and sympathy for the cause of the working-
classes. Without giving a definitive answer to
their query — a matter that pertained, he said, to
their diocesan bishop — ^he tried to make them un-
derstand that a good Catholic could not belong to
an association which had departed from the pur-
pose of its founder and was directed by men notor-
iously hostile to Christianity and the Church.
From the original draught of this letter, which was
published after Ketteler's death/* it is evident that
the Bishop judged far more favorably of Lassalle's
Personality and aspirations than most of his Catholic
contemporaries. Quite different, as we shall see,
was his verdict on the Socialistic Labor Party,
which arose long after Lassalle's death.

But to return to the year 1864. In spite of the
many and great difficulties that stood in the way,
Ketteier was firmly resolved to carry out the idea
so warmly espoused by him of Productive Associa-
tions for Workingmen. Among his papers Father
Pfülf found a number bearing on this subject.
One is of special interest, as it gives evidence of
the vastness of the social reform schemes that oc-
cupied his mind at the time. After showing the
necessity of workingmen's associations under exist-
ing economic conditions, he briefly discusses the ef-
forts that had been thus far made in this direction.
The trade-unions, he says, " are justified as Oper-
ations are justified on a diseased body : they pre-

** Raich, Briefe, pp. 332-8.

SOCIAL REFORM. I4I

suppose a state of sickness ; but, the malady being
there, they are relatively good. Therefore the
obstacles placed in their way by the law must be
removed. On the other band, we must not aid in
deluding the workman into the belief that in trade-
unions alone is salvation." Of the Schulze-
Delitzsch Associations he has this to say : " They
have awakened and furthered the idea of associa-
tion : this is a great boon, a return to the dark
Middle Ages ! They have been helpful in many
ways to the workingmen. In some respects they
have the advantage over the trade-unions. But
they have been abused, enlisted in the war on re-
ligion, and the directors have often used them
mereiy as a means to enrich themselves. . . How-
ever, if honestly managed, they can always be of
some Service."

He then passes on to the discussion of the Pfo-
ductive Associations properly so-called, where the
workmen are at the same time the sole proprietors
of the business. He is fully alive to the difficulties
and dangers of such enterprises, but thinks that
Christian charity will overcome all obstacles. He
next dwells at some length on Business Partner-
ships, at the head of which there is one owner and
manager, who keeps some of the shares representing
the business capital for himself and sells the rest
on easy terms to his workmen. " The advantages
of these associations are obvious : on the one band,
the better class of workmen will in time become part
owners of the business, whilst, on the other, the
drawbacks of the Productive Associations are ob-
viated by uniformity of management and sufficiency
of capital."

142

BISHOP KETTELER.

The promotion of this quadruple system of asso-
ciation, by adopting the good features of each, is,
in the Bishop's eyes, " one of the most important
tasks of the age, one of the most beautiful tasks of
the Christian nations." He is determined to make
a beginning himself by founding a grand central
association for the Organization of workingmen's
associations. From his own revenues he is ready
to contribute 5,000 florins annually for six years.
"In addition to this I am prepared ..." Here
the manuscript breaks oflF. No doubt he was on the
point of mentioning a still greater sacrifice he was
willing to make for the success of the enterprise.
He also projected the founding of a People's Bank
to be controlled entirely by workingmen.*^

All these beautiful dreams were doomed never to
be realized. A deeper study of economic and other
conditions gradually convinced Ketteier himself of
their impracticability. Then, without more ado, he
began to limit his plans to the attainable. He was
ready to support any undertaking that would as-
sure to the workmen an income over and above their
daily wages. This would at any rate solve the sub-
sistence question, he thought, and the social question
too, in so far as it was a " stomach question ".
From his letter to Lassalle we see that he had
50,000 florins on band with which he intended to
Start a number of such associations for the Grand-
Duchy of Hesse. A combination of untoward cir-
cumstances prevented him from carrying out his
plan at the time; the necessity of employing almost

*^ Pfülf, II, pp. 197-199.

SOCIAL REFORM. I43

the whole of his income for the maintenance of the
diocesan orphan asylums and other charitable in-
stitutions, wars, the Vatican Council, the Kultur-
kampf, old age, forced him to give it up altogether.
Besides, the time was not yet come for such schemes
to be successfully carried out. Men had to be edu-
cated up to them. The Catholics had so far done
little to organize the Catholic workingmen ; they
did not seem to think it necessary. No one did
more to enlighten them on this point than Ketteier.
Organization was the magic word on which he cen-
tred all his hopes for the Solution of the labor
question — Organization supported by the Church
and the State. In sermons, occasional addresses,
talks to his seminarians, he reverted to this theme.
On 19 November, 1865, the Gesellenverein cele-
brated the anniversary of its foundation. Ketteier
preached the sermon, his subject being " The Real
Enemies and the Real Friends of the Workman."
A few days later the Social-Demokrat reproduced
the most salient passages of the discourse, remark-
ing introductorily that " the Bishop of Mainz had
spoken words of extraordinary significance, which
deserved the widest circulation." What pleased
the labor organ most was Ketteler's insistence on
the necessity of labor organizations and of legisla-
tive protection for them. The following notes
jotted down by Ketteier in 1865 cover in the main
the same ground and deserve to be recorded, as they
reveal the position of his mind on the labor ques-
tion less than a year after the publication of his
A rheiter frage :

144

BISHOP KETTELER.

Who must help? Some say : The Church alone can
help. True, inasmuch as no one can help without the
Church; otherwise, onesided. Many must help.

I. What can the Church do? 1. The moral founda-
tions : awaken in employers and employed the sense of the
all-importance of the moral goods of mankind ; 2. in
conjtmction therewith arouse the spirit of charity.

IL What can the State do? 1. Associations ; 2. super-
vision ; 3. prohibitive measures ; 4. occasional subventions.

The State should make laws to facilitate Organization
and for the protection of labor (working hours, wages) ;
advance capital only exceptionally ; provide factory-
inspectors.

III. What the State cannof do.

IV. What can all do?*«

At a time when very few, if any, German socio-
logists even thought of transplanting the English
trade-unions to Germany, Ketteier pointed to them
as the basis for the Organization of the working-
classes.

" Corporate self-help," he wrote in 1865, " must
take the place of the individual self-help of Liberal-
ism, without however excluding reasonable support
on the part of the State. To this end I maintain
the necessity of an Organization to which all the
workmen must belong. As basis, the Gewerkschaft
(Trade-Union). Examine its Organization. En-
courage it to make proposals. Then elaborate a
Constitution for the working-classes. The Union
must assure protection, material and moral, to its
members in the sense of corporate self-help. The

*8 pfüif, II, p. 204.

SOCIAL REFORM. I45

various Unions form district federations.*^ These
federations are courts of appeal for the members;
they administer the common funds and form the
connecting-link between the State and the Union.
Recognition of the district federations by the
State. . . . '«

The " pulverization process " inaugurated and
promoted by economic Liberalism could be best
counteracted, Ketteier thought, by professional Or-
ganization. Such organizations would moreover
ofTset the centralizing tendencies of the State, be-
cause each would enjoy autonomy within its proper
sphere and be secured against the Invasion of its
rights from without by constitutional bulwarks.
Even the working-classes, he was sure, could be
educated for a certain degree of autonomy, which,
by wise control, could be kept within proper bounds.
Can we aspire to such a general Organization of
classes and prof essions ? he asks. Study and experi-
ence had taught him that there was no hope of
carrying them out for the present. But as he waS'
no mere social theorizer, no mere dreamer of Uto-
pian dreams, and as the distress of the working-
classes was growing worse from day to day, the
Bishop quietly pigeonholed his grand plans of uni-
versal reform and looked about him to see where
the need was greatest and what could be done to
relieve it.

*^ Equivalent to the English Trade Councils.
*8 Pf Ulf, II, p. 202.

CHAPTER XI.

GeRMANY AFTER THE WaR OF i866.

THE year 1866 marked a turning-point in
European history, but notably in the history
of the Catholic Church in Germany. The Austro-
Prussian War did not merely alter the map of Ger-
many : it made a change also in the relative positions
of Catholicity and Protestantism. In the old Con-
federation of German states which included Austria,
the Catholics had been in the majority. By the
Treaty of Prague the moral and numerical support
of 10,000,000 of their Austrian fellow Catholics
was suddenly taken from them, and over-night they
found themselves in the unenviable position of a
one-third minority. For them the Situation was
critical in the extreme. During the war their sym-
pathies had on the whole been with Austria and its
Catholic dynasty. What would be their lot under
the hegemony of " Protestant " Prussia, especially
of Prussia at the mercy of triumphant Liberalism
actuated by the fanatical notion that it was Prussia's
mission to decide for all times the world-war
against Rome in favor of Protestantism and unbe-
lief? Men's consciences were distraught, their
minds obscured, their passions excited. The his-
tory of the past seemed a record of ruins ; and the
future augured no good. Right counsel was in-
deed at a premium, as the editor of the Historisch-
Politische Blätter wrote at the time. Ketteier was

SOCIAL REFORM. I47

the man to give it; and he feit himself called upon
to do so. He had carefully worked out the intri-
cate Problems for himself; and the results were
published in a volume entitled Germany after the
War of 1866, of which the Frankfurter Zeitung ^
wrote: " Bishop von Ketteler's latest book is by no
means written from the specifically Catholic point
of view, but in a truly statesman-like spirit."

Germany after the War of 1866 quickly became
the book of the day. Edition after edition issued
from the press. Mgr. Pie, then Bishop of Poitiers,
afterward Cardinal, had it immediately translated
into French. From the correspondence between
David Urquhart, the English diplomat and Oppo-
nent of Palmerston, and the author, and from an
interview which Lord Denbigh, then on a European
journey, sought with Bishop Ketteier, it was evi-
dent that European statesmen began to reckon with
the latter as a political power. Count Leo Thun,
the aged Austrian statesman, repeatedly consulted
him regarding the attitude which a Catholic min-
ister of the Crown was to observe in the face of
modern political paganism.^ The Hohenzollern,
William I, despite the fact that the Bishop had to
teil him many an unpalatable truth, appeared favor-
ably impressed by the utterances of the churchman,
in an audience during a short stop-over of the King
at Mainz, in the following summer.

What the majority of the Catholics thought of
Ketteler's work was expressed by a reviewer in the
Katholik (Mainz), who wrote: " There is no doubt
that Germany after the War of 1866 takes a chief

1 12 February, 1867. ^ Briefe, pp. 270-271.

148

BISHOP KETTELER.

place among the literary publications of the day.
If ever a good word was spoken at the right time,
it is this word. And that a Catholic Bishop has
spoken it can only fill us with joy. . . . Such a
frank, fearless, Christian, German word is not
merely opportune, it is necessary, as necessary as a
piece of bread to a famished man, as a fresh breeze
to a navigator af ter a deathly calm ; it is as cheering
as the bright sun after a dark and stormy night." *

But not everywhere was the volume welcomed
with the same enthusiasm. It shared the fate of
other works from the same pen, and, if to many it
was a beacon-light, to others it became a blinding
flash that caused them to stumble. Some misin-
terpreted and misunderstood it. There were those
who imputed false motives to the author. In the
opinion of others he was too favorable to Prussia,
or eise to Austria; some accused him of abject
Submission to the conqueror of Sadowa; others, of
exciting the Catholics to hatred and mistrust of
Prussia. Even a cursory glance at the contents of
the book will show the injustice and one-sidedness
of these criticisms, inspired as they were by party
blas and personal antipathy.

Ketteier severely reprehends the unprincipled
worship of success indulged in by so many, and
which bade fair to become an epidemic. " The
principles of morality and right apply also to higher
politics, and injustice remains injustice even though
through God's Providence good may come of it." *
In the conflict between Austria and Prussia " formal

3 Vol. 47, p. 377.

* Deutschland nach dem Kriege von iS66, 6th ed., p. 1$.

SOCIAL REFORM.

149

right was evidently on the side of Austria." ^ But
Prussia's Injustice lies even deeper: " There was no
need of taking advantage of the extreme embarrass-
ment of the Hapsburgs in order to push Austria
out of Germany by an agreement with the agents
of the Italian Revolution and the assistance of the
revolutionaries in Hungary." ° " We shall never
cease to deplore this deed — not because we are
hostile to Prussia, but because we sincerely love it.
. . . We should cover our face in shame and weep
bitter tears for the action of our German Father-
land. ..."

The war of 1866 with the annexations that fol-
lowed in its wake Ketteier regarded as a violation
of historical rights and of the fundamental prin-
ciple of the law of nations.' On the other band,
he emphatically condemned the blind, irreconcil-
able Opposition to Prussia which was being heralded
in so many quarters at that time, Austria's politics
had not been straightforward in all respects, and
might have been more conciliatory in many. The
Progressive Party had pushed the Prussian Govern-
ment to the wall. Austria, aware of this, might
have made a concession to Bismarck without any
violation of right and without detriment to its na-
tional honor. Neither does Ketteier forget to ac-
knowledge all that is praiseworthy in the Prussian
System of Government, especially the liberty en-
joyed by the Church under the Constitution, which
he does not hesitate to call " a real Magna Charta
of religious peace for a religiously divided country
like Germany."

5 Op. cit., p. 44. « Ibid. 'f Ibid., pp. 57-58.

ISO

BISHOP KETTELER.

Politically Ketteier was in favor of a united Ger-
many under the leadership of Prussia. Austria
was to be treated, not as a foreign power, but as
the natural ally of the new empire.® In this way
the injustice of Sadowa might in some measure be
atoned for and the sympathies of the Middle and
South German States gradually gained.

But it was not really Ketteler's object to arouse
political agitation by his brochure; his purpose was
rather to banish the pessimism, the despondency
and pusillanimity which had unfortunately taken
hold of so many of his fellow countrymen and
fellow Catholics in regard to the aims of the
government.

We de not favor that dismal view of life which, when-
ever injustice trivunphs, forthwith thinks only of the
retributive justice of God. . . . If we look on the war
just ended as a misfortune fraught with the gravest dan-
gers for the future of our country, this is but another
reason for every German who loves his country to apply
all his energies to the task of finding a way out of the
threatening destruction.''

No Single action of man on earth can be said to be in
every respect disastrous. ... In public life a great
calamity is often the source of the greatest blessings.
This truth will teach us not to ignore in such events the
germs of good, of a beneficent renovation, in a word, the

^ Ibid., p. 84. " Prussia would have every reason, and it would
be to its own advantage, to make this alliance as firm as pos-
sible and as advantageous as possible for Austria." In the light
of recent events these words, written as they were more than
forty years ago, are nothing short of prophetic. Ketteier, as has
been often remarked, saw further than all the German statesmen
of his time.

s Op. cit., Fp. 67-68.

SOCIAL REFORM. 151

finger of God. We are therefore not to give ourselves
over to murmurings of discontent, to making sour faces
and indulging in lamentations, or to sit down idly with
folded arms. However painful the visitations permitted
by God may be, it is His purpose that they should benefit
us; and they will be truly salutary, if we but recognize
His designs in them and strive to turn them to good ac-
count. Animated by this cheering trustfulness we Chris-
tians are courageously to face the vicissitudes wrought
in the world around us, and thus escape that pessimism,
that dismal view of things, which paralyzes the energies
of the soul and makes us fancy that it is all over with
the World if God does not govern it according to our
narrow hiunan views.^°

In his forecast of the future, Ketteier would not
lose sight of the workingman's interests. The last
chapter, perhaps the finest of the whole book, which
bears the significant title " Christ — Antichrist," sete
forth the necessity of dealing on a dogmatic and
Christian basis with the Solution of the labor ques-
tion. He writes :

Other foundation for the State and the life of the
State no man can lay, but that which is laid by God,
Christ Jesus.

All economic efforts not based on religion and moral-
ity only widen the gulf that separates capital from
labor, the rieh from the poor, and bring that vast mass
of men who live by the labor of their hands to a State
in which they will be in want of the most indispensable
necessaries of life, a State which is not only in itself
barbarous, but which must necessarily end in frightful
social conflicts between poverty and riches such as we

10 Op. cit, pp. 8-12.

152

BISHOP KETTELER.

meet with in the States of antiquity when they were on
the verge of dissolution.

We will briefly resume the consequences of modern
economic Liberalism and of the theories to which it
owes its birth :

On the one hand, accumulation of capital ; on the
other, a proportionate increase in the number of those
whose only means of gaining a livelihood is their daily
labor ;

The share in the benefits resulting from the Co-
operation of capital, industry, and labor, reduced for the
workman to the barest necessaries of lif e ;

Wages determined solely by the daily market-value of
labor, by the supply and the demand, as in the case of
merchandise, with this difference, that, when merchan-
dise is supplied too abundantly, it can be stored up
against better times, whereas the workingman is forced
to deliver his goods, that is, his labor, at any price no
matter what the supply or demand may be, unless he
cares to face the prospect of perishing with hunger ;
hence the tendency among workmen to underbid one
another in times of industrial Stagnation; hence also
the decrease of wages below the barest necessaries of
life, which is nothing eise than slow death by starvation,

When his circvunstances improve a little, the work-
ingman easily yields to the temptation of making up for
his previous privations by over-indulgence, with the re-
sult that, when hard times come again, he feels his de-
stitution all the more keenly. According to a report laid
before the English Parliament " on the means of sub-
sistence of the poorest classes of work-people in Eng-
land," whole sections of the population lack about a
fourth-part of what was set down as the minimum in-
dispensable for subsistence. The same report mentions
several counties — not of Ireland, but of England — where
more than half of the inhabitants are without sufficient
nourishment for the preservation of health and rigor. . . .

SOCIAL REFORM. I53

Such for the majority of workingmen are the neces-
sary consequences of the principles of economic Liberal-
ism; and when we remember that perhaps eighty out of
every hundred human beings belong to the working-
classes, we cannot close our eyes to the gravity of the
social conditions toward which we are hastening.

For these unhappy results of its own doctrines modern

economics has no satisfactory remedy to offer

Some of the remedies advocated are so immoral and
cruel that we should not have expected to hear mention
made of them except in a pagan Society. We will show
by two examples to what extremes we have arrived on
this point.

The remedies proposed by the Malthusians against
over-population may be summed up as follows: Popula-
tion tends to increase in a geometrical ratio, subsistence
cannot increase faster than in an arithmetical ratio ; by
increasing faster than the means of subsistence, man-
kind brings want and misery on itself, and is in part,
directly or indirectly, doomed to destruction. A child
born in an overpopulous country has no natural right to
the means of subsistence. A System of universal relief
is an evil, because it can serve no other purpose than to
increase the population and the prevalent distress. The
only way out of the general misery is to restrain the in-
crease of the population. The Government has a right
to interfere in this matter by wise legislation and police
control; for the rest, poverty must be left to itself as
much as possible.

Irreligious and anti- Christian political economy has
brought things to such a pass that men are not ashamed
to give public expression to such revoltin g principles as
these. If there is an excess of population, " a portion of
the human race must be sacrificed. This is a necessity
of nature. Why give any further thought to it?" "A
child born in an overpopulous country has no natural

^54

BISHOP KETTELER.

right to the means of subsistence — the laws and the
police force must stop the increase of the inhabitants
— poverty must be left to itself." It is by the appli-
cation of such principles that men are turned into sav-
ages; and yet how widespread they are! The very lan-
guage of these economists is an outrage on Christian
sentiment ; they speak of the workingman as one does of
a thing that can be bought and sold, of stock in trade.

Another influential representative of modern economics,
Stuart Mill, has set up the following system: Every hu-
man being has a right to be supported by its progenitors
until it can look out for itself. To beget a being which
one cannot or will not support is a crime. Undoubtedly,
Society must come to the aid of its suffering members,
but it can insist that those who are supported at the
public expense abstain from marriage. The only remedy
for our social ills consists in propagating everywhere
reasonable and voluntary moderation in regard to the
number of children to be brought into the world. The
Government has the right to promote this moderation
by legal measures. Relief is out of the question until
we regard the poor who beget children with the same
feeling as we do drunkenness or any other physical
disorder.^^

To this pass, we repeat, has irreligious and anti-
Christian political economy brought us, that such crimes
■can be publicly taught. We are not surprised that in
England, in consequence of these doctrines, infanticide is
practised to such an extent as to remind us of the morals
of China. ^^ In scientific treatises and public lectures

11 Ketteier refers his readers to F. A. Lange: /. St. Mill's
Ansichten über die Soziale Frage, 1866, and Historisch-Polit.
Blaetter, Vol. 57.

1' Ketteier quotes in support of this assertion the official
" Christmas Report for 1865," published by Dr. Lancaster,
Coroner of Middlesex, and Ch. Perin, De la Pichesse, Vol. II,
p. 128.

SOCIAL REFORM. I55

the abomination of impurity is unblushingly held up as
a means for decreasing the number of childreii, and
child-murder is preached as a remedy for the distress of
the working-classes. Impurity and infanticide — these
were the lowest depths to which corrupted paganism
descended.

Christianity brought us the sublime ideal of the pure
family, of the family in which, as the Apostle says, " the
nuptial bed remains undefiled " — a word that of itself
includes a world of blessings for the human race ; and the
Short time that has elapsed since we turned our backs
on Christianity has sufficed to throw us back into the
horrors of paganism. In Christian families, however
poor in this world's goods they may be, children with
their God-like souls are the choicest benediction of
heaven, the source of the purest joys of life, and a Chris-
tian father knows no sweeter consolation on his bed of
death than to bless his virtuous offspring. In Christian
families marriage is a moral, an august, a holy relation ;
a sublime chastity, watched over by the eye of God alone,
protects the child from the first moment of its exist-
ence. This is still everywhere the case where the con-
science is moulded by Christianity. Of all these price-
less goods modern economics takes no account. By fav-
oring the selfishness of capital in its most sordid shape,
by promoting the accumulation of wealth in the hands
of a few, it drives to despair the workingman who is
condemned to fight empty-handed against overwhelming
odds, and leaves him no other resource than counsels
the most degrading, immoral, and barbarous : the murder
of infants, " who have no right to existence ", or im-
purity " to prevent them from being born ".

This helplessness of economic Liberalism in the face
of social misery finds its counterpart in the efforts of
Social Democracy, with this difference, that the Socialists
frankly sympathize with the working-classes in their

156 BISHOP KETTELER.

distress. For the rest, their Systems too are nothing
but doctrinarian experiments of no real value for the
Solution of the labor problem. We are therefore justi-
fied in maintaining that, on the one band, the difficulties
resulting from the condition of the laboring-classes are
alarmingly on the increase and that, on the other, all
the theories of modern economics are radically in-
capable of providing a remedy. When the moral bond
of Union between men has been torn asunder, it is im-
possible to fill up the abyss that separates the rieh from
the poor: there is nothing left but the struggle for life
and death.

Thus in every sphere of human activity the world is
drawing near to the final Solution; and this Solution is
to be found in Christ Jesus, in the doctrines and moral
principles of Christianity.

In science, in international law, in political and so-
cial life, everywhere man is confronted by obligations
imposed on him by God. If he fulfils them in Jesus
Christ and through Jesus Christ, he will find progress,
perfection and true happiness; God will be glorified
in humanity, and hmnanity will realize its supreme
destiny. If he seeks to fulfil them in defiance of Christ
and His law, he will find corruption, decay, death, the
hand of all against all and the curse of God.

Other foundation no man can lay, but that which \s
laid, Christ Jesus.

" Christ or Anti-Christ — that is the alternative." ^»

^2 Deutschland nach dem Kriege von 1866, pp. 231-331.

CHAPTER XII.

A Christian Labor Catechism. 1869.

ii /"^AST thy bread upon the running waters,"
V.^ says Ecclesiasticus, " for after a long time
thou shalt find it again." Twenty years had elapsed
since Ketteier delivered his famous social sermons
in the Cathedral of Mainz, six years since he had
appealed to the Catholic world in Liberty, Author-
ity and the Church to study the great social ques-
tions of the day and to bring the eternal principles
of Christianity to bear on their Solution, and four
years since the publication of Christianity and the
Labor Question; but, for reasons already pointed
out, the positive results were very meagre indeed.
" True and right ideas must be put before the world
over and over again in "order to assure them the
victory," was a saying often repeated by Wind-
thorst, and he used to add facetiously : " In Ger-
many italways takes twenty-five years for true ideas
and views to break their way through." In a won-
derful passage in Germany after the War of 1866
on the power of ideas Ketteier gives expression to
a similar opinion, and so he was not discouraged
when he saw that his preaching and writing on the
social question did not straightway set the world
on fire. He continued to cast his bread upon the
running waters, confident that he should find it
again. And he did find it again.

The year 1868 marks the real birth of the Catho-

1^8 BISHOP KETTELER.

lic Social Reform Movement. In the spring of that
year Joseph Schings, a young but extremely well-
informed curate of Aix-la-Chapelle, founded the
Christlich- soziale Blätter, the first Catholic periodi-
cal exclusively devoted to the study of the great so-
cial Problems of the day. A few months later three
Catholic societies met in Convention in Crefeld,
organized themselves into the Christian Social
Party and chose the Christlich-soziale Blätter for
their official organ. Needless to say, the socio-
logical principles of the new party were those ex-
posed with so much warmth by the Bishop of Mainz.
Of greater importance for the Solution of the so-
cial question than even these highly praiseworthy
efforts was the Conference of German Bishops held
at Fulda in September, 1869. To Ketteier belongs
the honor of having originated the idea of these
Conferences which have proved such an immense
blessing on the Catholic Church in Germany/ In
1867 the Bishops came together to discuss ways and
means for the establishment of a German Catholic
University — a pet project of Ketteler's which like so
many another of his was never to be realized ; the
approaching Vatican Council brought them to-
gether again two years later. Ketteier thought the
time was come for the Episcopacy to pronounce
authoritatively on the attitu-rle of the Church on
the social question, and so among the subjects for
deliberation we find the following: "The care of
the Church for factory work-people, journeymen,
apprentices and unemployed servant-girls ". The

^ Pfiilf, II, p. 379; and the same author's Cardinal v. Geissei,
II, pp. 569 s.

SOCIAL REFORM. 159

President of the Conference, Archbishop Melchers
of Cologne, commissioned Ketteier to work out a
report on this point of the program.

Ketteier seems to have devoted every spare mo-
ment of his busy days to the preparation of this
report. He had not yet finished it when his annual
Visitation tours brought him into the neighborhood
of Offenbach, into the heart of the industrial dis-
trict of Hesse. Before returning to Mainz he in-
vited the faithful, especially the workingmen, to at-
tend the closing devotional exercises at the Shrine
of Our Lady of the Woods (Liebfrauen-Heide).
About 10,000 workingmen responded and on 25
July, the anniversary day of his episcopal conse-
cration, he delivered his famous sermon on the
" Labor Movement and its Relation to Religion and
Morality," of which Decurtins said more than
twenty years after, that it was " one of the most im-
portant and noteworthy utterances ever made on
the social question and its Solution from the Catho-
lic point of view." ^

It was the Bishop's object to show what was
legitimate and what was unlawful and dangerous
in the world-wide labor movement and the reform
demands put forward by the workingmen.^ He in-
tended to answer these questions " briefly, but with
perfect openness, with that blunt openness which
the truth has a right to demand." The whole dis-
course is admirably adapted to the capacity of the
audience — a characteristic which marks all of Ket-

2 (Euvres Choisies de Mgr. Ketteier, p. Ivii.
^ Die Arbeiterbewegung und ihr Streben, im Verhältnis zu Re-
ligion und Sittlichkeit, 4th edit., p. 4.

l6o BISHOP KETTELER.

teler's sermons and addresses — but with such a sure
grasp of the subject-matter, such a deep knowledge
of actual life, that, even at this distance of time, it
makes a deep and lasting Impression on the reader.
The sermon is too long to reproduce in füll, but I
cannot help hoping the reader will be pleased to
have the main part of it.

After devoting some paragraphs to the lawful-
ness and necessity of labor organizations, Ketteier
continues :

We will now examine one by one the reforms which
the laboring-classes wish to realize by their united efforts.
Step by Step we shall see that religion is intimately bound
up with the labor question, with every demand made by
the workingman, and that godlessness is the greatest
enemy of the working-classes.

The first demand of the working-classes is : increase of
wages corresponding to the true value of labor.

This is, on the whole, a very fair demand ; religion
also insists that human labor be not treated like an
article of merchandise and appraised simply according
to the fluctuations of offer and demand.

Economic Liberalism, making abstraction of all relig-
ion and morality, not only degraded labor to the level of
a commodity, but looked on man himself, with bis capac-
ity for work, simply as a machine bought as cheaply as
possible and driven until it will go no more. To combat
the dreadful consequences which resulted from the ap-
plication of such principles the Trade Unions arose in
England and, in time, spread into other countries. They
are beginning to take root in Germany too, and not a
few of you belong to them. The chief weapon of the
Trade Unions against capital and the grande Industrie
is the Strike, by means of which, in spite of many reverses
and seeming def eats, they have succeeded, as the English-

SOCIAL REFORM. l6l

man Thornton has but quite recently proved, in increasing
wages 50, 25, and 15 per cent. . . .

Just as these efforts may be to reclaim for human labor
and the laborer the human dignity of which economic
Liberalism had robbed them, it is evident that they will
not procure you any real advantages, my dear workmen,
and will not be crowned with any lasting success unless
they go hand-in-hand with religion and morality. Two
considerations will make this clear.

In the first place, you cannot close your eyes to the
fact that there must be a limit to wage-increase, and that
even the highest wages attainable under f avorable condi-
tions cannot do more than provide you with a decent sub-
sistence. The natural limits of wages are determined by
the productiveness of the business in which you are em-
ployed. The intellectual and material capital sunk in
the business will be withdrawn and diverted into other
Channels the moment wages become so high that the in-
vestment ceases to pay. In that case work is at an end.
Hence, in spite of combinations among workmen, there
is a limit to wages, and it would be a fatal mistake if
you did not make this clear to yourselves and if you al-
lowed yourselves to be misled by exaggerated promises
into the belief that an indefinite increase of wages was
possible.

The highest wages you can hope for will, therefore,
merely assure you of a respectable competency provided
you make temperance and economy the rule of your life.
And these priceless goods — temperance and economy —
the working-classes will be possessed of only if their
lives are guided by the spirit of religion. It is a fact
absolutely beyond dispute that the welfare of the work-
ing-classes is not merely a matter of wages; there are
f actory districts where wages are very high, but the pros-
perity of the people very low, while in others, where
wages are by no means so high, the blessings of life are
far more in evidence.

l62 BISHOP KETTELER.

One of the greatest dangers for the workingman in
this respect is drunkenness, pleasure-seeking, fostered
and promoted by those well-nigh countless saloons and
taverns which crop up like mushrooms wherever work-
people are found in large numbers, and which are un-
fortunately too freely tolerated, or even encouraged, by
Governments for mercenary motives. . . . Saloons are
nothing but a base speculation for cheating the working-
man out of his hard-earned wages. A few brief months
given up to intemperance amply suffice to absorb the
biggest pay. Of what use, then, are high wages to one
who is the slave of intemperance ? And yet, on the other
hand, what moral power is not required to keep the
workman f rom debauchery and intemperance ! Perhaps
no labor to which toiling man has ever been condemned
on earth is so exacting, so unintermitting, so fatiguing
as mill or factory work. How easy for a man who is
tied down without respite for the same nmnber of hours
to the same mechanical work every day of his life to be
tempted, when released at last from this deadening toil,
to seek compensation in intemperance and dissipation !
Unusual moral energy is required to be sober and thrifty
under such circumstances. Religion alone can infuse
this high moral sense into the workman. If therefore
higher wages are to profit you indeed, my dear workmen,
you must, above all, be true Christians.

Secondly, in your efforts to obtain higher wages, you
have need of religion and morality in order not to carry
your demands too far. We have already seen that there
is a limit to the increase of wages. Hence. in our tüne,
when the movements among the working-classes for the
amelioration of their material condition are assuming
larger proportions from day to day, it is of the highest
importance not to exaggerate this demand : the working-
man can be only too easily imposed upon and the power
of Organization used to wrong purposes. The object of

SOCIAL REFORM. 163

the labor movement must not be war hetwccn the work-
man and the employer, but peace on eqidtable terms be-
tween both.

The impiety of capital, which would treat the work-
man like a machine, must be broken. It is a crime
against the vvorking-classes ; it degrades them. It fits in
with the theory of those who would trace man's descent
to the ape. But the impiety of labor must also be
guarded against. If the movement in favor of higher
wages oversteps the bounds of justice, catastrophes must
necessarily ensue, the whole weight of which will recoil
on the working-classes. Capitalists are seldom at a loss
for lucrative Investments. When it comes to the worst
they can speculate in government securities. But the
workman is in a far different position. When the busi-
ness in which he is employed comes to a standstill, un-
employment Stares him in the face. Besides, exorbitant
wage-demands afifect not only the large business concerns
controlled by the capitalists, but also the smaller ones in
the hands of the middle classes and the daily earnings of
master-workmen and handicraftsmen. But if the work-
ing-classes are to observe just moderation in their de-
mands, if they are to escape the danger of becoming
mere tools in the hands of ambitious and unscrupulous
demagogues, if they wish to keep clear of the inordinate
selfishness which they condemn so severely in the capital-
ist, they must be filled with a lofty moral sense, their
ranks must be made up of courageous, Christian, religious
men. The power of money without religion is an evil,
but the power of organized labor without religion is just
as great an evil. Both lead to destniction.

The second claim put forward bv the working-classes is
for shorter hours of labor.

I cannot teil just how far you have to complain in this
district about the length of the working day. One thing,
however, is certain : working hours and wages have shared

i64

BISHOP KETTELER.

the same fate. Wherever capitalists, ignoring the dignity
of man, have acted on the principles of modern political
economy, wages have been reduced to a minimum and
working hours have been prolonged to the limits of hu-
man endurance — and beyond them. Day and night, like
a machine, the workman cannot be kept going ; but f or
all that the impossible was expected from him. Hence,
wherever the hours of work are lengthened beyond the
limits fixed by nature, the workingmen have an indis-
putable right to combat this abuse of the power of wealth
by well-directed concerted action.

But here again, my dear workmen, the real value of
your efforts depends on religion and morality. If the
workman uses the hour thus put at his disposal to fulfil
in the bosom of his family the duties of a good father or
a dutiful son, to tend to the aifairs of the house, to cul-
tivate the plot of ground he calls his own, then this hour
will be of untold value to himself and his family. If,
on the contrary, he throws it away in bad Company, on
the streets, in the tavern, it will neither profit his health
nor his temporal and spiritual prosperity. It will simply
serve to undermine his Constitution, to disfigure the
image of God in his soul, and to dissipate his wages all
the more quickly and surely.

The third demand of the working-classes is for days
of rest.

This claim, also, is perfectly legitimate. Religion is
not only with you here, but, long before you, it vindicated
the necessity of regularly recurring days of repose. God
Himself inscribed them on the tables of the Law : " Re-
member thou keep holy the Sabbath Day."

In this respect, too, our modern economists have com-
mitted, and still commit, a crime against the human race
that cries to Heaven for vengeance. The culprits are not
merely the wealthy entrepreneurs who force their work-
men to work on Sundays, but also all tradesmen, land-

SOCIAL REFORM. 165

owners and masters generally who deprive their servants,
hands or Clerks of their well-earned Sunday rest. A
number of labor leaders have quite recently openly ex-
posed the hypocrisy of Liberalism in this matter. It has
always been a favorite trick of the capitalists to throw
the veil of the tenderest philanthropy over their ruthless
abuse of the workman and to hold up the urgent demand
of the Church for days of rest as prejudicial to the in-
terests of the working-classes. With what minute exact-
ness were not the Sundays and holidays counted up, and
with what a sugared mien was not the grand total of
possible gain calculated if these days were given up to
work ! From this the inf erence was drawn that the
money-magnates were animated by the purest feelings of
charity and that the Church was hard-hearted and cruel
and hostile to the prosperity of the people. To this the
Organs of the labor party replied that there was another
means of securing these advantages for the laboring-man
without having to work him to death. This means would
be to give him as much pay for six days' work as he now
receives for seven. The profit to the laborer would re-
main the same, and he would not sacrifice his human
dignity, into the bargain. Who can deny the truth of
this Observation? If the capitalists were right, it would
be inhiiman to allow the workman even the indulgence of
sleep. The immense profit to be derived from night-
work could be demonstrated to you with the same hypo-
critical mien as the benefit of Sunday work. Just as
man has need of a certain nvunber of hours out of the
twenty-four which make up the day for repose, so also
has he need of one day of rest out of the seven which
make up the week. He has a right to this for the sake
of his soul, in order that he may have leisure to think of
his relationship to God, to recoUect that he is not merely
a son of toil, but a child of God as well. He has a right
to this for the sake of his body, for whose health and

l66 BISHOP KETTELER.

vigor he must have a care. Just as a master who em-
ploys a workman a whole day is obliged to give him time
for the necessary night-rest and to calculate his wages
accordingly, in the same way the factory owner, who
uses up the brawn and muscle and brain of a workman
for a whole week, is bound to give him the necessary
weekly day of rest and to estimate his wages accordingly.
The time devoted to repose must be added to the time
spent at work, inasmuch as it has become necessary by
reason of the work done and is a prerequisite of the work
to be done.

But, my dear workmen, it is not enough that the labor
leaders and the labor organs insist on days of rest. Each
one of you must work to this end by scrupulously keep-
ing holy the Sabbath Day. There are still, unfortu-
nately, very many workmen who, without being obliged
and simply for lucre's sake, work on Sundays. Such man
sin not merely against God and His commandment, but
really and truly against the whole body of workpeople,
because by their base cupidity they furnish the employers
with a ready-made excuse for refusing days of rest to all
without exception. May all the workpeople, not except-
ing the servant-girl whom a heartless mistress over-
burdens with work, and the humble railway-employee for
whom wealthy corporations have made Sunday a dead
letter, with one voice reclaim this right as a right of
man. To what purpose have the so-called rights of man
been laid down in our Constitutions so long as capital
is free to trample them under foot?

It is certain that you have religion on your side in your
demand for days of rest ; it is certain also that all the
eflforts of the working-classes would be of no avail if they
were not sustained by the power of religion and the
divine precept : " Remember thou keep holy the Sabbath
Day." But it is no less certain that this weekly day of
rest will profit you, your health, your soul, your families.

SOCIAL REFORM.

167

frort! whom your work keeps you away so much during
the week, only if you remain intimately united with the
Church. Without religion the days of rest will serve no
other purpose than to bring ruin on the workman and his
family. What is called " blue Monday " is nothing eise
but Sunday spent without religion. . . . Your own ex-
perience is able to furnish you with examples enough of
the vast difiference between a workingman's family in
which the day of rest is spent in harmony with the prin-
ciples of religion and one in which religion is ignored.
A Christian Sunday is a blessing ; a Sunday passed in
the saloon, in bad Company, in drunkenness, in impurity,
is a curse.

A fourth demand of the working-classes is the prohibi-
tion of child labor in f actories.

I regret to say that this demand is not as general as it
ought to be, and that many workmen send their children
to the mills and factories in order to increase their in-
come. It would be more correct to say that it is a de-
mand made by certain spokesmen of the labor organiza-
tions. Fritzsche, the president of the Cigar Makers'
Union, has been especially active in this matter. He
brought in a motion in the parliament of the North
German Confederation to have child labor prohibited by
law. Unfortunately his motion was thrown out. Child
labor was restricted but not forbidden. I deplore this
action of the legislature profoundly, and look on it as a
victory of materialism over moral principles. My own
observations are in füll accord with the Statements of
Fritzsche on the bad effects of factory labor on children.
I know right well what arguments are brought forward
to excuse it, and I am also aware that even some who are
well-disposed toward the working-classes wish to see
child labor tolerated to a certain extent. Children are
in duty bound, these men argue, to help their parents
in the labors of the house and the field, why debar them

l68 BISHOP KETTELER.

from the factory? These people forget that there is a
vast difference between work at home and work in a fac-
tory. Factory work quenches, as it were, the family
spirit in the child, and this is, as we shall see presently,
the greatest danger that threatens the working-classes in
cur day. Moreover, it robs the child of the time it
should devote to innocent, joyous recreation so necessary
at this period of life. Lastly, the factory undermines the
bodily and spiritual health of the child. I regard child
labor in factories as a monstrous cruelty of our time, a
cnielty committed against the child by the spirit of the
age and the selfishness of parents. I look on it as a
slow poisoning of the body and the soul of the child.
With the sacrifice of the joys of childhood, with the sac-
rifice of health, with the sacrifice of innocence, the child
is condemned to increase the profits of the entrepreneur
and oftentimes to earn bread for parents whose dissolute
life has made them incapable of doing so themseives.
Hence I rejoice at every word spoken in favor of the
workingman's child. Religion in its great love for chil-
dren cannot but support the demand for the prohibition
of child labor in factories. You, my dear workmen, can
second this demand most efficaciously by never permit-
ting your own children under fourteen years of age to
work in a factory.

The fifth demand made by the working-classes is that
women, especially mothers of families, be prohibited from
working in factories.

Jules Simon says in his warmly conceived and highly
instructive book L'ouvriere: * " Our whole economic Or-
ganization is suffering from a dreadful malady, which is
the cause of the misery of the working-classes and must
be overcome at all costs if dissolution is to be checked —
I mean the slow destruction of family life." After de-
scribing conditions prevailing in many industrial districts

* Paris, 1863.

SOCIAL REFORM. 169

of France repeatedly visited by him, where women work
in the factories and family life is but an idle word, he
comes to the conclusion that higher wages for workpeople
are useless so long as they are not accompanied by a
thorough regeneration of morals, and that, on the other
hand, all moral reform must begin with the restoration
of family life.

All the abuses described by Jules Simon, abuses which
have assumed even greater proportions in England than
in France, do not exist to so wide an extent in Germany,
at least not in the valley of the Rhine, where, as far as I
know, mothers of families are nowhere employed in
factories. . . .

Two things follow from what has been said thus far:
the workpeople are beginning to understand more and
more the supreme importance of the family for their
own prosperity, and the close connexion between religion
and the urgent reforms demanded by the working-classes
— reforms which will never be fully realized except in
and through religion. Religion also wants the mother
to pass the day at home in order that she may fulfil her
high and holy mission toward her husband and her chil-
dren. All that Jules Simon, all that the friends of the
workman have ever said concerning the significance of
the family, is infinitely surpassed by what you heard in
your youth and still hear out of the mouth of the Church
on the sanctity of the Christian family. There is no
doubt that the labor question is above all a question of
morality and religion. The more intimately you are
united with the Church, the better wives you will have
for yourselves, the better mothers for your children, the
more cheering will your home life be, the more effectuallj
will the ties of family keep you from the dangers of the
tavern, the cheap eating-house and the dens of shame.

A sixth demand made by many and which follows as a
corollary from the previous one is, that young girls should
not in future be employed in factory work.

I70

BISHOP KETTELER.

Various reasons have been urged in favor of this de-
mand. Thus it has been pointed out that, as a general
rule, girls can work for far lower wages because they
require less to live on, and that therefore wholesale girl
labor must of necessity have a damaging effect on the
wages of men.

But the principal argument against the employment
of girls in factories is the prejudicial influenae of factoiy
work on the morals of the working- girls and conse-
quently on the families of the future. Workmen them-
selves have repeatedly called attention to these sad con-
sequences. In their meetings such striking argiunenta-
tion as the following has been heard : " We want good
and happy families ; but to have good and happy families
we must have pure, virtuous mothers; now, where can
we find these if our young girls are lured into the fac-
tories and are there inoculated with the germs of impu-
dence and immorality?" I cannot teil you, my dear
workmen, how deeply such words Coming from the ranks
of the working-classes touched and gladdened my heart.
Ten years ago, when the labor movement was still in its
infancy among us, such sentiments were hardly heard
anywhere except from our Christian pulpits. The Lib-
erais were insensible to the moral dangers to which the
daughters of the workman were exposed. When these
poor creatures were utterly corrupted in the factory, their
employers still had the effrontery to pose as their bene-
factors — because, thanks to them, they were earning so
many cents a day. The dangers of factory life to the
morals of the young working-girls and therefore to the
family of the workman are beginning to be recognized
more and more even by the factory-owners themselves.
This is a happy sjmiptom and shows once more that the
labor question, like all the other great social questions,
is in the last analysis a question of religion and morality.'

' Op. cit., pp. 7-19. Here Ketteier details the guarantees that

SOCIAL REFORM. 171

After a soul-stirring appeal to fathers and broth-
ers to leave no stone unturned to safeguard the
virtue of their daughters and sisters, Ketteier lays
down a few short, pregnant rules for distinguishing
the true social reformer f rom the sham one, the true
f riend of the workman f rom his deadliest enemy :

Beware of those who scoff at religion ; beware of those
who wish to lead you away from religion and to hinder
you in the Performance of your religious duties. They
are your deadliest enemies, because, as we have seen,
every step forward in behalf of the workman is accom-
panied by religion and morality. Hence, if any one pro-
tests that he is anxious to help you and at the same time
attacks your religion, you may be sure he either knows
nothing about the labor question or he is an impostor.
There are men in our midst who act as though they were
able to convert their sneers at religion into bread and
money. The transf ormation that does take place is this :
their every thought and word and deed are converted into
slanderous invectives against us Catholics; their aspira-
tions after liberty and progress, their patriotism, their
enlightenment, their love for the people, their solicitude
for the welfare of the people — all is metamorphosed, in
the case of these men, into blasphemy, into slanders
against religion and us Catholics. Beware of these men :
they are not leaders of our workpeople, but deceivers and
seducers.®

" These are the words," Ketteier concludes,
" which I wished to address to you, my dear work-
men, at the close of my sojourn among you. They
are intended to express in some way, however im-

mast be given before young girls can be permitted to engage in
factory work.

® Op. cit., pp. 21-22.

172

BISHOP KETTELER.

perfectly, my heartfelt affection for you and my
warm interest in your welfare. You see from them
that, as Catholics, you can take a large share in
the labor movements of to-day without detriment
to the principles of your holy faith. But you see
also that all your efforts will be vain if they are
not based on religion and morality." ^

On 5 August the Liebfrauenheide Address ap-
peared in print dedicated " to all the Christian
workmen of the diocese of Mainz ". A fourth edi-
tion became necessary before the end of the month.
The Kölnische Volkszeitung, the Christlichsoziale
Blätter, and other Catholic Journals, welcomed it
enthusiastically. " The manly öpenness and truly
Christian boldness with which your Lordship ut-
tered truths which our Catholic bourgeois could not
have endured to listen to from any one but you,
touched me so deeply that I read your brochure
through twice at a sitting," a priest of the arch-
diocese of Cologne wrote to Ketteier. Quite char-
acteristic is the criticism of the Arbeitgeber, one
of the leading Socialist organs :

" This little work contains a rare and curious
medley of sound and unsound economic views, of
digested and undigested economic material, inter-
mixed with real and sectarian, or rather Roman
morality, true and untrue notions and estimates,
impregnated with that religion which smells of in-
cense, whose light is reflected from the sanctuary
lamp on Images of Saints and cast on the outer
World through painted windows. If this were not
so, the author would not be Baron von Ketteier.

" Op. cit., p. 24.

SOCIAL REFORM.

173

Only a brain which has subjected itself with incom-
parable military Subordination to the dogmas of
the Roman Church and is withal endowed with un-
common intelligence could have produced a work
like this." ^ The impression made on the Catholic
laboring world by Ketteler's address was a lasting,
an indelible one. In 1909 the fortieth anniversary
of the event was solemnly commemorated on the
Liebfrauenheide by divine Services and appropriate
discourses in the presence of a great concourse of
people who had flocked thither from Hesse and
the adjacent parts of Prussia and Bavaria.

Whilst Ketteler's Christian Labor Catechism, as
the Liebfrauenheide address has been called, was
making the rounds of Germany, Bebel and Lieb-
knecht, two friends of Marx's, encouraged by the
dissensions in the ranks of the Lassalleans, called a
labor meeting in Eisenach for the purpose of
" uniting the various German workingmen's so-
cieties." Here the Social-Democratic Labor Party
was organized as a branch of the International
Workingmen's Association,'' with almost identical
Statutes. Article 8 of the socio-political program
adopted at this meeting demanded " the abolition
of all press, association and coalition laws; the
adoption of the normal working day; the restriction
of female labor and the prohibition of child labor."
To this the Congress of Gotha (1875), at which a
Union between the Lassalleans and Marxians was

8 Pf Ulf, II, p. 439.

8 Founded in St. Martin's Hall, London, 28 September, 1864.
Marx's program was adopted and definitively sanctioned by the
Congress of Geneva in 1866.

174

BISHOP KETTELER.

effected, added the demand for Sunday rest from
work (but insisted that all elections should in
future take place on Sundays or holidays) and
for factory laws ^" — both anticipated by Ketteier,
as we shall have occasion to refer to again.

Ketteier had gradually come to be looked up to
as the natural adviser in all matters bearing on the
social question. The Protestant sociologist Dr.
Huber sent him a number of his writings with the
request to make their Contents known, through some
qualified person, at the next Katholikentag. " The
deep reverence," he wrote, " which I have for years
entertained for your Lordship in every respect, but
especially on account of your vigorous and dignified
championship of the interests of our poor people,
gives me ground to hope that my request will be
granted. In spite of various differences of opinion,
I do not hesitate to call myself a fellow-laborer
of your Lordship in the same field, the field in
which the issues of the future chiefly lie . . . I
have repeatedly declared before the world that the
Church of which you are so worthy a prince and
servant — that the Catholic Church has an altogether
eminent mission to fulfil for the social regeneration
of the world." ^^

Dr. Hermann Rösler, Prof. of Political Economy
at the University of Rostock, presented Ketteier
with a copy of his well known work On the Funda-
mental Doctrines of Adam Smith' s Economic
Theory (1868), hoping, as he said, that " the ideas
set forth therein would find the approval of such

^° Hitze, Die Soziale Frage, pp. 113 ss.
1' Pfülf, II, p. 187.

SOCIAL REFORM. 175

an eminent authority." Dr. Rösler's sociological
and political works were very populär in Protestant
Germany until the author became a Catholic in 1878
— then they were ignored.^"

In France and Belgium, where his controversial
writings were already well known, Ketteler's Chris-
tianity and the Labor Question began to be seriously
studied. The Paris Avenir National discussed his
social reform proposals in an excellent series of
articles, while the Journal des Villes et Campagnes
thought Ihem deserving of the attention of the Com-
ing Vatican Council/^

An English Protestant Peer, Lord Stanley of
Alderley, a great admirer of Ketteler's works, es-
pecially of his Liberty, Authority and the Chtirch,
and a sincere friend of the Irish Catholics, wrote
to the Bishop of Mainz on 16 August, 1869, request^
ing him to address an open letter to him against
the proposed secularization of the property of the
disestablished Irish Protestant Church. It was
Lord Stanley's opinion that this property should
be chiefly used for the unconditional endowment
of the Catholic parishes as some compensation for
all the sufferings endured by the Catholic clergy
during the last three hundred years. It is not
known what Ketteier replied, but from other docu-
ments we know that he fuUy shared the opinion
of the noble Lord in this matter.^*

12 Dr. Rösler (1834-1894) was in the Service of Japan from
1879 to 1893, helping to reorganize the Japanese Government.
He is the author of the Japanese Commercial Code. He secured
toleration for the Catholic Missions from the Mikado.

ispfülf, II, p. 432.

1* Cf. Freiheit, Auctorität u. Kirche, 27; Pfülf, II, p. 433.

CHAPTER XIII.

The German Bishops and the Social Question.
Social Program for the Clergy. 1869.

THE historic Conference of Fulda began its ses-
sions on i September, 1869. All the North
German and nearly all the South German Bishops,
nineteen in number, were present. The afternoon
of 5 September was devoted to the discussion of
Ketteler's paper " On the Care of the Church for
Factory Workpeople, Journeymen, Apprentices and
Servant Girls."

The subject of this report [the Bishop said] is the so-
called social question — the gravest question our age has
to solve.

I propose to answer the following questions:

1. Does the social question concern Germany?

2. Can and should the Church help to solve it?

3. What remedies can be applied?

4. What can the Church do to apply them?

After a vivid description of the wretched condi-
tion of the working-classes in the great industrial
centres of Europe, especially of England, " the
classical land of industrial progress," — a descrip-
tion which shows that he had carefully studied the
most reliable publications on the subject — the
Bishop continues :

I. DOES THE SOCIAL QUESTION CONCERN GERMANY?

As regards Germany, the social evil is not so widespread
as in England, though the danger grows f rom day to day.

SOCIAL REFORM.

177

But we must not for a moment entertain the notion that
the modern industrial System will be replaced in the near
future by another and a better one. The concentration
of capital will go on in Germany as elsewhere, bringing
in its wake the successive suppression of the craftsman
and the small tradesman, and increasing the number of
dependent workmen and proletarians. We must be pre-
pared for this. No human power can stop this develop-
ment of things. The same causes will necessarily pro-
duce the same effects, in Germany as in the rest of the
World.

II. CAN AND SHOULD THE CHURCH HELP TO SOLVE THE
SOCIAL QUESTION?

There is only one answer to this question. If the
Church is powerless here, we must despair of ever arriv-
ing at a peaceful settlement of the social question.

The Church can and should help ; all her interests are
at stake. True, it is not her duty to concem herseif di-
rectly with capital and industrial activity, but it is her duty
to save eternally the souls of men by teaching them the
truths of faith, the practice of Christian virtue and true
charity. Millions of souls cannot be influenced by her if
she ignores the social question and Contents herseif with
the traditional pastoral care of souls. . . . The Church
must help to solve the social question, because it is in-
dissolubly bound up with her mission of teaching and
guiding mankind.

(a) Did not the teaching Church concem herseif at
various times in her Councils with the abuses of capital
and did she not for dogmatic reasons proscribe usury and
the taking of interest on account of the social conditions
of the time? Why should not the Church occupy herseif
with similar questions at present?

{b) The social question touches the deposit of faith.
Even if it was not evident that the principle underlying

178 BISHOP KETTELER.

the doctrines of economic Liberalism, which has been
aptly styled " a war of all against all," is in flagrant con-
tradiction with the natural law and the doctrine of uni-
versal charity, there is no doubt that, arrived at a certain
stage of development, this System, which, in a number
of countries, has produced a working-class sick in body,
mind and heart, and altogether inaccessible to the graces
of Christianity, is diametrically opposed to the dignity
of a human being and a fortiori of a Christian, in the
mind of God, who meant the goods of earth to be for
the Support of the human race and established the f amily
for the purpose of perpetuating man and educating him
physically and morally, and above all to the command-
ments of Christian charity which ought to regulate the
actions not of individuals only, but of every social Or-
ganization ; theref ore this System deserves to be rejected
for dogmatic reasons.

Liberal economists themselves admit that freedom of
competition must be limited, unless we wish to look for-
ward to a general sauve qui peut on the field of battle
where the weak are exterminated by the strong.^^

{c) Moreover, in the face of the materialistic concep-
tion of the workingman, according to which he is no
longer a man, but a mechanical force, a machine, a thing
that can be abused at pleasure, it is the mission of the
Church to impress on the employer the maxim of St.
Paul : " If any man have not a care of his own, and es-
pecially of those of his house, he hath denied the faith,
and is worse than an infidel." ^^

[d) To save the souls of countless workmen entrusted
to her by Christ, the Church must enter the field of social
reform armed with extraordinary remedies. She must
exert herseif to the utmost to rescue the workmen from a

15 Röscher, System der Volkswirtschaft, Stuttgart, 1861, I, p.
175-

1 6 I Tim. 5 : 8.

SOCIAL REFORM. I 79

Situation which constitutes a real proximate occasion of
sin for them, a Situation which makes it morally impos-
sible for them to fulfil their duties as Christians.

{e) The Church is bound to interfere ex caritate, as
these workmen are in extreme need and cannot help them-
selves. Otherwise the unbelieving workingman will say
to her: Of what use are your fine teachings to me?
What is the use of your referring me by way of con-
solation to the next world, if in this world you let me
and my wife and my children perish with hunger? You
are not seeking my welfare, you are looking for some-
thing eise.

(/) By solving this problem, which is too difficult for
mankind lef t to his own resources ; by accomplishing this
work of love, which is the most imperative work of our
Century, the Church will prove to the world that she is
really the institution of salvation founded by the Son of
God ; for, according to His own words, His disciples
shall be known by their works of charity.

{g) Finally, the Church must take the part of the
workman, because if she does not, others will, and he will
fall into the hands of those who are either indifferent
or hostile to Christianity and the Catholic Church.

III. WHAT REMEDIES CAN BE APPLIED?

Here it could be objected that the labor question, as
well as the remedies proposed for its Solution, is still too
tangled and has not matured sufficiently for the Church
to handle it thoroughly, calmly and with any well-
founded hope of success. This objection is altogether
unfounded. The question is ripe. All parties admit the
existence of the evils of which I have spoken, and these
evils will go on increasing indefinitely unless some-
thing is done to check them. No power on earth can
arrest the onward march of the modern System of
economy. We are forced to reckon with the whole sys-

l8o BISHOP KETTELER.

tem, and it must be our endeavor to mend it as much
as we can, to find a corresponding remedy for each of
the evils resulting from it, and to make the workman
share as largely as possible in the benefits it offers.

It would be diificult indeed to know how to attain this
end, if we left the matter to the theoretical and, for the
most part, sterile discussions of certain political labor
parties; but the question appears much simpler and
even in part settled, if we look at the practical results
obtained by benevolent entrcpreneurs who zealously es-
tablish and promote associations and institutions for the
welfare of their workpeople. . . . Noble-minded Chris-
tian men have succeeded in relieving the misery of the
workman, in healing his physical and moral wounds, in
spreading culture, religion and morality, the pleasures
and benefits of the Christian f amily life among the labor-
ing Population. If institutions of this kind existed
everywhere, the labor question would be settled to all
intents and purposes.

Here Ketteier quotes the Official Report of the
Prize Jury of the Paris Exposition (1867), edited
by M. Leroux, French Minister of Agriculture and
Commerce, to show what had been already accom-
plished for " the material, intellectual and moral
uplift of the working-classes in the industrial cen-
tres of Europe." To the eleven headings under
which the social reform works are here grouped, the
Bishop added a twelfth of his own :

Legal Protection for the Workman.

1. Prohibition of Child Labor in factories.

2. Limitation of working-hours for lads employed in
factories in the interest of their corporal and intellectual
welfare.

SOCIAL REFORM. l8l

3. Separation of the sexes in the Workshops.

4. Closing of unsanitary Workshops.

5. Legal regulation of working-honrs.

6. Sunday rest.

7. Obligation of caring for workmen who, through no
fault of theirs, are temporarily or forever incapacitated
for work in the business in which they are employed.

8. A law protecting and favoring Coöperative Asso-
ciations of Workingmen.

9. Appointment by the State of factory inspectors.
Such are, in broad outline, the remedies which, as ex-

perience proves, eliminate or at any rate diminish the
evils of our present industrial system and bring real re-
lief to our workpeople. Let this system of associations
and welfare institutions be carried out everywhere with
due attention to local needs and the social question will
be solved.

IV. HOW CAN THE CHURCH PROMOTE ASSOCIATIONS AND
INSTITUTIONS FOR WORKPEOPLE?

1. It cannot be the mission of the Church to found as-
sociations and institutions for workmen herseif and take
their direction into her own hands ; but by sympathy, en-
couragement and approbation, by Instruction and Spirit-
ual Cooperation, she can further their development in
the highest degree.

2. The Church must arouse interest in the laboring
classes especially amongst the clergy, who are only too
often indifferent in this regard because they are not con-
vinced of the reality and gravity of the social evil, be-
cause they have no real grasp of the nature and extent
of the social question and no clear ideas about the re-
medies to be applied.

The labor question cannot be ignored any longer in
the courses of Philosophy and Pastoral Theology in our
seminaries. It would be an important step in the right

l82 BISHOP KETTELER.

direction if a certain nvimber of ecclesiastics could be
induced to make a special study of political economy.
They would have to be provided with traveling allow-
ances to enable them to study labor conditions on the spot
and to gain personal knowledge of the welfare institu-
tions already in existence. The results of their investi-
gations and observations would be communicated to their
brethren in the ministry at periodic Conferences estab-
lished for the purpose.

3. Priests appointed to parishes in industrial districts
should be both able and willing to take an intelligent
and practical interest in the welfare of the workpeople.

4. If the bishops encourage the clergy to study the
social question, perhaps some day a man will rise up who
will be for the factory workpeople what Kolping has
been for the journeymen. Such a man's mission would
be, to enlighten the workman in the true sense of the
Word, to fill him with manly courage and trust in God,
to gain as many Christian hearts as possible for the cause
of the workman and to unite them for action. Such a
mission entrusted to the right man could not but be
productive of the greatest blessings.

5. Finally, the press must be used to arouse the in-
terest of the general public in the Christian Solution of
the labor question.^ ^

If the Catholic clergy of Germany have taken
such a prominent part in the social reform move-
ment of the last forty years, and if there are so
many really able political economists and practical
sociologists among them at present, this is due in the

1^ Ketteler's Fulda Report was first published in the Christ-
lichsoziale Blätter, 6 Nov., 1869; Italian translation appeared in
Venice, 1870. It has been repeatedly reprinted since. " In the
history of the social question and of the social action of the
Catholic Church," Prof. Hitze wrote in 1886, " this report will
always retain a prominent place." {Arbeiterwohl, 1886, no. 7.)

SOCIAL REFORM. 183

first place to the splendid initiative of the Bishop
of Mainz and the other princes of the Church as-
sembled at Fulda on the eve of the Vatican Council.

An immediate result of the Fulda deliberations
was the appointment in each diocese of a commis-
sion to inquire into the condition of the working-
classes. A Joint report was to be drawn up and
presented to the bishops at their next Conference.

On the same day on which Ketteier made his re-
port on the social question to the German bishops,
the Twentieth Catholic Congress met at Düsseldorf.
Here too the social question stood in the fore-
ground. A permanent section for social questions
was created whose object it was to be " to promote
the Organization of Christian-Social Societies for
the economic and moral improvement of the work-
ing-classes and the spread of Christian-Social liter-
ature." The principles and reform proposals laid
down by Ketteier in his Liebfrauenheide Address
were unanimously adopted as the basis for all
Catholic social action, and Christian men of every
Station of life were invited to take a real practical
interest in the working-classes.

The number of Christian-Social Societies con-
tinued to increase from day to day. At a Conven-
tion held in Essen in the spring of 1870 one of the
Speakers could point with justifiable pride to an
army of 195,000 Catholic men already enroUed
under the banner of Christian social reform. Vis-
ions of a glorious social regeneration arose before
the eyes of the assembly. " The Christian-Social
Societies," continued the Speaker, " will soon count
their members by the hundreds of thousands. A

l84 BISHOP KETTELE R.

respectable army ! I see a bright future before us.
Thirty thousand German priests will put their
hands to the work." ^*

The bright future was a long time Coming. The
Prussian Government laid its mailed hand on the
Catholic societies, exiled bishops and priests, and
declared every manifestation of Catholic life and
activity to be treason. The fight for the liberty of
the Church drew the minds of men from the Work-
shop, the coal mine and the iron mill to the school
room, the pulpit and the altar. " We must first win
liberty for the Church," Windthorst said in 1875,
when approached on the subject of factory legis-
lation, " and then we can throw ourselves into the
social reform movement." ^®

i^"The Catholic clerical party," the Sozialdemokrat com-
mented on this Convention, " especially the clergy, shows more
clearly every day that it is determined to interfere in the labor
movement." (1870, no. 13.)

^® Wenzel, Arbeiterschutz und Zentrum, p. 21.

CHAPTER XIV.

At THE Vatican Council and in the Reichs-
tag. 1 869-1 871.

ALTHOUGH Ketteler's attitude at the Vatican
Council has no direct or even indirect bear-
ing on his social reform work, except perhaps in
so far as he seriously entertained the idea of sub-
mitting a Catholic social reform program to the as-
sembled Fathers, it will not be out of place to say
a Word on this subject.

When Pius IX informed the bishops of the world
of his Intention to summon a General Council in
Rome at no distant date, Ketteier welcomed the
announcement with the greatest enthusiasm. " The
Coming Council," he wrote at the time, " will be
the most important event of the Century — at any
rate among the constructive events ; other events
have been great principally in the destructive Or-
der." And to the faithful he wrote: " Pray with-
out ceasing that the General Council which the
Holy Father has announced, to the unspeakable joy
of all who love Christ and His Church, may take
place according to the fulness of the love and the
mercies of God and that nothing may intervene
to prevent it."

The nearer, however, the date set for the open-
ing of the Council approached, the fiercer became
the storm of Opposition to the Church and her
visible Head, artificially aroused by the anti-

l86 BISHOP KETTELER.

Catholic press and a clique of discontented, proud-
minded, restive, Catholic (in name only) savants,
clerical and lay. It was especially against the
proposed dogmatization of the infallibility of the
Pope that the agitation was directed. The weirdest
spectres were conjured up to terrify the masses and
a significance out of all proportion to the reality
was attached to the dogma in order to win over
the politicians and diplomatists. The agents of the
French emperor were particularly busy in this di-
rection and the German Freemasons and Liberais
warmly seconded them. The notorious Janus
pamphlet had done its work : so much noise had not
been made and so much dust had not been raised
within the memor}^ of man over a religious question.
When the confusion was at its height (February,
1869), Ketteier came forward with another of his
timely brochures: The General Council and What
It Means for Our Tune, which was rapidly spread
in five editions throughout the German-speaking
world/ Written in his characteristically clear, im-
pressive style, it could not fail to set the minds of
all honest inquirers at ease and keep them from
wandering dangerously astray. It was above all
the Bishop's own unequivocal profession of faith
in the divine guidance of the Church and in the
infallible teaching authority of her Head, the Vicar
of Christ on the throne of Peter, that encouraged
clergy and people to look with confidence and cheer-
fulness into the future, however dark the prospect
might appear.^

1 French, Italian, and English translarions were immediately
prepared.

' Cf. Das allgemeine Cuncü. Part VI : Die Frage aller Fragen.

SOCIAL REFORM. 187

What Ketteier professed on the eve of the
Vatican Council he had professed throughout his
life. The doctrinal infallibility of the Pope in mat-
ters of faith and morals was taught with his ex-
press approbation in the clerical seminary in Mainz.
He never had the slightest sympathy with Gallican-
ism and he deeply deplored the stand taken by
Döllinger and his school. " Shortly before his
departure for the Council," says Dr. Heinrich, " I
spoke to him about the violent attacks directed
against the doctrine of Papal Infallibility and the
new objections daily urged against it. At the end
of our conversation he said with great earnestness :
' Nothing can shake my faith in this doctrine '." *

On 23 May, he declared in a plenary meeting,
that he had always believed in Papal Infallibility,
but he insisted on a thorough examination of the
theological proofs put forward to justify its dog-
matic definition as well as of the arguments ad-
vanced by the Opposition. Though he circulated
in the Council a pamphlet, ad instar tnanuscripti,
of the learned and pious Jesuit Quarella, which in
a few points seemed to militate against the doctrine
of the infallibility, he did not accept all the theories
of this work. " When Your Lordship," Victor de
Bück, S.J., wrote to Ketteier, 12 November, 1872,
" at my special request, sent me a copy of the
pamphlet in question, you accompanied it with the
foUowing words : ' This work does not express my
ideas. I had it printed in order that it might be
examined '." *

3 Katholik, Vol. 57, p. 257.
^ Brie je, p. 557.

l38 BISHOP KETTELER.

It is true the Bishop was not very favorably in-
clined toward a formal dogmatic definition o£ Papal
Infallibility and belonged to the so-called minority
er inopportunists in the Council : " In our time,"
he wrote to Bishop Dupanloup, " it is not oppor-
tune to increase the number of dogmas." His mind
was naturally of a practical bent and he thought
that the Council should concern itself chiefly with
practical decrees for the sanctification of the
Church, with the application of the practical prin-
ciples of Christianity to the lives of the faithful. I£
he erred in this, it was an error of the intellect, for
his heart was fiUed with the tenderest love of the
Church, and all his desires, all his prayers were
directed to the one object, that the holy will of
God might be done. His whole attitude was deter-
mined by his severe conscientiousness, his straight-
forwardness — the consueta aninii rectitudo, which
Archbishop Dechamps praised in him — not by
party-spirit. " In Germany," says Baron von Hert-
ling, " he was looked upon as the head and leader
of the ' right wing ' of the Catholic forces, as an
ultramontane of the strictest observance. To find
himself in, or at any rate to be regarded as belong-
ing to, another camp in Rome certainly meant no
small sacrifice to him, but he made it because his
conscience demanded it of him, and later on he de-
clared more than once that he never even for a
Single moment regretted the stand he had taken." ^

After the Council, when his enemies made his
conduct the subject of their invidious comments, a
number of ecclesiastics, who had had every occasion

2 Hist. Polü. Blaetter, Vol. 125, p. 300.

SOCIAL REFORM. 189

to watch him closely du ring his stay in Rome,
stepped forward unasked to bear witness to the
absolute loyalty and correctness of all his move-
ments. He kept aloof, they said, from everything
that looked even remotely like cabal or intrigue;
he openly before all men walked the way his con-
science pointed out. That it was no pleasant and
easy way is evidenced by the concluding lines of a
letter to Archbishop Dechamps, dated July, 1870:
" Throughout my whole life I have cheerfully
battled with the enemies of the Church and should
have done so without flagging to the end of my
life; but the unhappy dissensions that divide the
Bishops weary me out and break my spirit, so that
I would fain lay down my pen." ®

When the discussion of the question of Papal In-
fallibility arrived at the point where it became
necessary to decide one way or the other, Ketteier
was not opposed to the definition ; he only wanted to
have it formulated somewhat differently from the
wording which had been agreed upon by the ma-
jority and, in order to make its reception all the
easier, promulgated, not as a separate decree, but
as an integral part of the Constitution on the
Church. Hence, as he believed that he could not
vote either with Non placet or with an uncondi-
tional Placet, and a Placet ad modum was not ad-
missible in the definitive session, he quitted Rome
on the eve of the final vote (17 July) after a
written declaration that he submitted beforehand
to the decisions of the Council.'^

^Briefe, p. 555-

"^ Ketteier, Das unfehlbare Lehramt des Papstes nach der

I90

BISHOP KETTE LER.

Ketteier had hardly returned from the Vatican
Council when the Franco-German War broke out.
During the eleven months, from August, 1870 to
July, 1871, twenty-seven thousand French pr'soners
of war were confined in his episcopal city of Mainz.
The Bishop was as solicitous for their welfare as if
they had been of his own flock. He appointed a
number of prominent ecclesiastics who could speak
French fluently to look after the sick and the dying.
Later, when French chaplains arrived, he gave
hospitality to two of them in his own residence and
saw to the welfare of the others who were always
received with kindness as guests. The Seminary
Church was reserved for the soldiers to facilitate
their ready approach to the sacraments, and special
arrangements were made with the clergy of St.
Christopher's Church, so that the six hundred offi-
cers quartered in the town might have Mass regu-
larly. On Whit Monday 150 soldiers were solemnly
confirmed in the Cathedral.^

As soon as it became known that the question of
a definitive Constitution for the new Empire was
being discussed by representatives of the German
States, Ketteier addressed a letter to Bismarck, then
at Versailles, drawing the attention of the Chan-
cellor to the manifest advantages that must accrue
to Germany if the relations of the Church and the
State were established on the basis of the Prussian
Constitution of 1850. This Constitution had

Entscheidung des Vai. Conc, 3rd edit., Mainz, 1871, p. 71 s.
See also Ketteier, Die Minorität auf dem Concil. (a reply to
Lord Acton's "Letter to a German Bishop"), Mainz, 1870.

* Jos. Strub, C. S. Sp., Rapport sur les Prisonniers de Guerre
Frangais internes ä Mayence, Paris, 187 1.

SOCIAL REFORM. I9I

brought freedom to the Church and the inestim-
able blessing of religious peace to the State. But
the " Iron " Chancellor, whilst, as it seemed, per-
sonally well disposed toward the Bishop of Mainz,'
had already set his face in another direction, and
this first attempt to divert the approaching storm
proved abortive. Pressure of business, Bismarck
declared in a later interview, had prevented him
from answering the Bishop's letter.

The terrible war was still on when the Liberal
and Masonic organs began a campaign of calumny
and abuse against the Catholic Church, its head and
members, the like of which it would be hard to
find in the annals of national history. These at -
tacks become more virulent still as the time for the
general elections drew near. It was evident to
every observing mind that the most vital interests
of the Church, nay the very existence of the Church
in Germany would depend in large measure on the
attitude of the first Reichstag. On 13 February,
Ketteier addressed a circular letter to his clergy
on the approaching elections, pointing out their
supreme importance and admonishing them to do
their duty as Citizens and as shepherds of their
flocks.^" Two weeks later he preached a vigor-
ous sermon on the duty of voters. The discourse
made a deep Impression in the country at large.
About the same time it became known that five elec-
toral districts had requested him to become their
candidate for the Reichstag. After some hesita-
tion he decided in favor of Tauberbischofsheim in

9 Pfülf, II, p. 253.

i*' Ketteier, Hirtenbriefe, p. 653 ss.

192

BISHOP KETTE LRR.

Baden, where the Liberais had put up a very strong
man and were sanguine of success. The election
returns (8 March) showed a handsome majority
of over 4000 for the Bishop of Mainz.

Shoulder to Shoulder with Windthorst and Mal-
linckrodt, August and Peter Reichensperger, Ket-
teier championed the cause of true civil and reli-
gious liberty in Berlin. In spite of his sixty years
he was as assiduous in attendance and as active in
debate as the youngest member. On 3 April he de-
livered a powerful speech on the proposed Constitu-
tion and in consequence became involved in a long
controversy with various Liberal press organs.^^
This incident convinced him that he could not re-
main in parliament much longer without compro-
mising his episcopal dignity. The Liberal majority
was made up almost exclusively of Rome-hating,
Rome-baiting fanatics, of apostate Catholics courted
by the Government, of unbelieving Jews, of Free-
masons, Free-thinkers and rationalistic Protestants,
who were determined to listen to no arguments but
to carry their point by the brüte force of numbers.
On 25 April he returned to his diocese and in the
following December resigned his seat in the Reich-
stag in favor of an orthodox Protestant gentleman
who had warmly espoused the cause of the Centre
and of religious liberty. In a splendid little work
entitled The Centre Party and the First German
Reichstag, Ketteier gave his constituents a faith-
ful account of his parliamentary activity, exposed
his reasons for accepting a seat in a legislative body

^'^ Remarkable were also Ketteler's Speeches on the notorious
Lutz " pulpit-paragraph " and on the dogma of Papal Infallibility.

SOCIAL REFORM.

193

and made no secret of the reasons which induced
him to resign it. Before bidding farewell to Berlin
the Bishop made two more attempts to convince
Bismarck of the folly of his anti-Catholic policy;
but to no purpose. Equally fruitless was an inter-
view with the emperor, whose attitude toward the
Catholic Church had undergone a change for the
worse since the Treaty of Frankfort. He declared
the dogma of Papal Infallibility, the Syllabus, etc.
to be dangerous to the welfare of the State, and
accused the Catholics of having begun hostilities.
Evidently someone had poisoned His Majesty's
mind."

12 Pastor, Aug. Reichensperger, II, pp. 49 s.

CHAPTER XV.

LiBERALISM, SOCIALISM, AND ChrISTIANITY. 187I.

THE pseudo-Liberalism which held the reins of
power in Germany and which the Bishop had
had occasion to study in action on the floor of par-
liament, was the subject of Ketteler's famous dis-
course before the thousands of his countrymen
whom the twenty-first Catholic Congress had as-
sembled in Mainz, 11 September, 1871.

While there is nothing so necessary for the develop-
ment of the new German Empire as religious peace [he
began], nearly all the parties have set upon us and are
determined at all costs to conjure up a religious conflict.
. . . We must not be surprised at this. It is nothing
new. There never was a time when truth and justice
ruled unopposed in the world. The great men of every
age have always been the great fighters for justice and
right. . . .

Since, therefore, we must fight, our highest concern
must be to fight well. To this end it is above all neces-
sary to understand the age in which we live, to know the
means we must employ to fight successfully for truth
and justice. Every age has its own peculiar character,
while the great principles always remain the same. He
who does not understand the special character of his
time and is satisfied to act on general principles, for
the most part simply beats the air, strikes over the heads
of his contemporaries. This is a tactical mistake only
too frequently made by us. Because we are sons of that
Church whose very essence it is to announce, to preserve,

SOCIAL REFORM.

195

and cultivate, for the salvation of the whole human race,
the great principles, the great fundamental truths on
which all human things are based, it happens but too
easily that we stop at these principles without giving
ourselves the trouble of studying how they may be best
applied to the ever-changing condition of things around
US. In this way we become unpractical and fall back
upon truisms and commonplaces, which are excellent in
themselves but do not hit that particular nail on the
head which must be hit in our time.

To help the Catholics to a proper understanding
of their Situation and to show them the way to ulti-
mate victory in the approaching desperate conflict,
Ketteier makes them acquainted with the foe —
Liberalism. No one before or after him has given
US so true, so living a likeness of the party that
undertook to give the coup de gräce to the Catholic
Church in Germany. He describes Liberalism in
its infancy, Liberalism in its manhood and Liberal-
ism in its refractory offspring, Socialism — " which
is causing it so much grief, which it would gladly
fasten on us Catholics, but which clings tight to it
and can triumphantly prove the legitimacy of its
descent." ^

There is one truth [the Bishop said] that we must never
lose sight of. Socialism, which in itself is one of the
most pernicious errors of the human mind, is perfectly
legitimate, if the principles of Liberalism are legitimate.
If Liberalism were right in its principles, Socialism
would be right in its deductions. If I admitted the prin-
ciples of Liberalism, to be logical I should have to be a
Socialist. Perhaps I should still have my doubts about

1 Cf. Leo XIII. Encycl. " Quod Apostolici Muneris " of 28
Dec, 1878, and " Diuturnum Illud " of 29 June, 1881.

196

BISHOP KETTELER.

the efficiency of the means proposed by Socialism for
lightening the burdens of mankind, but at any rate I
should feel bound to give therm a trial. We Christians
possess the exclusive privilege of knowing certain means,
not indeed of making men perfectly happy here below,
but of providing them with a degree of happiness surpass-
ing by far all that others can offer them. Outside of
Christianity there is nothing but experimenting, and, if
I were a Liberal, I should experiment with Socialism.

Liberalism makes a present God of the State. The
Liberais speak none the less of religion and Church.
This is the plainest nonsense. Socialism steps up and
says : " If the State is God, the historical development
of Christianity is a colossal imposition. I, for my part,
will have nothing to do with religion, Church or liturgy."

Liberalism wishes to rob matrimony of its religio iis
character, yet strives to preserve it as a civil contract.
Socialism comes forward and says : " If God has not
regulated marriage, what right has man to force his pre-
scriptions on us? Our will is our law; our ever-chang-
ing passions are a natural law with which no man has
a right to interfere."

Liberalism says: "There is no divine eternal law
above the law of the State; the law of the State is ab-
solute. The Church, the family, and the father, have
no other rights than those which the State thinks fit to
grant them through its legislative organs. But private
property is inviolable. There are exceptions to this, of
course. The State can deprive the Church of her goods,
because her proprietary rights are based on the civil law ;
for the same reason all Catholic institutions may be de-
spoiled — but as regards our personal property, no one
dare lay hands on that." Socialism answers : " Nonsense.
If the State is the only source of right and law, it is also
the source of private property. Whatever is regulated
by the State is right. We demand a revision of the laws

SOCIAL REFORM.

197

relating to property and inheritance. At present the
good things of life are in the hands of a few; the bulk
of men live in poverty and wretchedness — a cruel and in-
human State of things. The title to property is derived
from personal labor. Landed property belongs to the
whole human race. ..."

If the premises are true, if the State is the present
God, if the law is absolute, who can dispute the right of
the State to reform the laws regulating private property?
What the State has done as the present God, to speak
vi^ith Hegel, it can undo again in the same capacity.

Liberalism laughs at the word eternity; it sneers at
the consolations of religion. Material enjoyment is man's
only destiny. This is why it tries to monopolize all the
wealth of the world. It finds it quite natural that ninety
per Cent of humanity should be excluded from the
banquet in order that the elect remnant may live in
satiety.

The Socialists ansvi^er : " We also laugh with you at
eternity; we also sneer at the idea of a recompense in
the other world to make up for the miseries of the present
one. You have taught us in your press and in your
schools what we ought to think of such specimens of
priestcraf t. But if there is no eternity, if our life ends
with this life and if our happiness consists exclusively in
the gratification of the senses, it is an unpardonable
crime to prevent ninety per cent of hiunanity from fol-
lowing their vocation and to advise them to sacrifice them-
selves in the interests of the other ten per cent. There-
fore all must be given an equal share in the goods of
earth ; all must do their share of work and be paid ac-
cordingly. To-day it happens only too frequently that
lazy, unscrupulous coupon holders have all, and the work-
man has nothing, nothing of all those things which can
make man happy; this State of things is intolerable."
These conclusions are not true, because the principles of

198

BISHOP KETTELER.

Liberalism are false, because Christianity is right when
it says that there is an eternity, that sensual enjoy-
ment is not the end of man and cannot render him
happy, that God is his end, that God alone can satisfy
his hunger after happiness. But if Liberalism were right,
Socialism would be logical, Liberalism would be nothing
but a monster of selfishness.

Liberalism wants to make all men equal. This it pro-
mised in Opposition to the inequality of the past. It be-
gan its leveling process by tearing down the barriers
which separated classes and estates. But instead of
keeping its promise, it has set up a more brutal distinction
between men than any known tili then — money. This
distinction is all the more humiliating because it is not
counterbalanced by distinction of rank as in former
times, nor toned down by the spirit of Christianity and
time-honored customs. The abyss yawns deeper from
day to day. Behind Liberalism Socialism Stands with
clenched fists. " Very well," it cries. "All men are
born equal and must become equal again. The abolition
of class distinction is of no avail so long as property re-
mains in the hands of a few, thus making equality an
idle phrase. Property destroys social equality; it de-
stroys educational equality; it destroys equality in the
acquisition and possession of the goods of this life; it
destroys political equality, because the very right of fran-
chise is controlled by money ; it destroys civil equality
in public as well as in private life, because those who
have not are in the power of those who have ; it destroys
equality before the law of which you speak so much,
because the rieh man has far other means at his disposal
for obtaining the protection of the law than the poor
man; it destroys equality in regard to the holding of
Government offices from which the poor are altogether
excluded ; it destroys equality of military service, for who
will dare to compare the one year of voluntary service,

SOCIAL REFORM.

199

which is an amusement for the rieh, with the three years
of the poor day-laborer and artisan? It destroys, in a
word, all equality in regard to the enjoyment of material
things, for which man has been created and sent into the
World. Away with your pretended equality ! Away with
your economic principles, whose sole aim is to concen-
trate the wealth of the earth in the hands of a few !"

All that Socialism says is true as against Liberalism;
but in the last analysis it is false, because Christianity is
right, and because neither Liberalism nor Socialism has
any real idea of true liberty and equality, above all of
true equality, which is not merely a matter of position
and Standing, but is dependent on other things of which
Liberalism and Socialism know nothing. It was of
these other things that St. Paul was thinking when he
asked Philemon to treat his servant Onesimus no longer
as a slave, after he had become a child of God by Bap-
tism, but to receive him and love him as a brother. The
more deeply Christianity enters into the lives of men,
the more truly equal they become in the possession and
enjoyment of goods so high that temporal inequality
vanishes before them. But if the principles of Liberal-
ism were true, if the goods of earth were alone worth
possessing, its promised equality would be nothing but
fraud and delusion, and Community of goods would be
an absolutely necessary condition of equality. But, I re-
peat, this would be an illusion too, because Liberalism
and Socialism are both wrong.

For many years we have heard the cry of Liberalism:
" Everything through the people." Hegel says : " The
people as far as it is the State is the absolute power on
earth." With this catchword the Liberais have fought
against the authority derived from God and laughed to
scorn the formula " By the Grace of God." This for-
mula, it is true, has been unspeakably abused by despot-
ism; but for all that it expresses the grand old truth

200 BISHOP KETTELE R.

proclaimed by the Apostle, that all authority comes from
God, that every magistrate, whether elected by the people
or not, exercises an authority derived from God, com-
municated and legitimized by God; because God has or-
ganized society in all its constitutive parts, and con-
sequently set up authority and power as necessary condi-
tions for the development of the human race.

With the maxim: " Everything through the people,"
Liberalism has ruined all the foundations of the social
order. This magic f ormula is a fatal illusion. The doc-
trines of Liberalism, ancient and modern, are not and
never were the doctrines of the people properly so-called.
Through the press and the school Liberalism has indeed
penetrated into certain strata of the people, but its
doctrines have not gone forth from the people. No
party has ever shown itself so utterly incapable of un-
derstanding the people such as it is, such as it lives in
its hamlets and villages and towns, as Liberalism. Its
f avorite phrase : " Everything through the people," is
very useful for its subterranean Operations, but it is a
hollow phrase. When it says " Everything through the
people," translate it " Everything through Liberalism
and nothing through the people."

Socialism takes up this colossal lie of Liberalism
and cries " To be sure, everything through the people,
but it is we who are the true representatives of the
people. You represent the ten per cent who possess
the fatness of the land, we, the ninety per cent, who
work in the sweat of our brow. Hegel says that the
people are the absolute power on earth ; it is we who are
the people ; we are the State ; we are the present God
— we workmen, not you capitalists and bankers."

If the principles of Liberalism, I repeat again, are
true, Socialism is right. Modern Liberalism is incon-
sistent. The little manoeuvre which consists, in theory,
of constantly speaking of the people, govemment of the

SOCIAL REFORM. 201

people, Church of the people, etc., and, in practice, of
robbing it of liberty and making a fool of it — this
manoeuvre, I say, cannot go on much longer. The peo-
ple will not always be led by a fool's line. Once more,
Socialism is right against Liberalism ; but bef ore the
judgment-seat of reason and Christianity both one and

the other are wrong

This is the Situation ; these are our f oes. Their power
lies in their strong Organization and in the influence they
exercise on the press and the elections. We must fight
them with their own weapons. A single good Organiza-
tion is better than a thousand speeches. Good organiza-
tions, good newspapers, good elections — these are the
pieces of ordnance with which we Catholics must take
the field against our enemies. . . . The future belongs to
Christianity — that is seif -evident ; and neither to Liberal-
ism nor to Socialism. But perhaps we shall have to pay
dear bef ore we learn how to fight properly in the time
in which we live. Our weakness to-day consists solely
in our manner of fighting '

Under the title, Liberalism, Socialism, and Chris-
tianity, this Speech was published soon after the
Katholikentag and, like Ketteler's other Kultur-
kampf brochures, was read with avidity by hun-
dreds of thousands. It was this speech that earned
for him the name of " Fighting Bishop " {der streit-
bare Bischof). The anti-Catholic press was es-
pecially fond of making use of this designation in
a malevolent and spiteful manner. " The Nordd.
Allgem. Zeitung," Ketteier wrote to the Germania
a few months before his death, " is in the habit of
giving me the title of ' the fighting Bishop of

2 Liberalismus, Socialismus, und Christentum. Mainz, 1871,
third edit.

202 BISHOP KETTELER.

Mainz.' I can accept it only upon the supposition
that it looks on those who are constrained to defend
the highest goods of man as of a fighting disposi-
tion. My fighting spirit goes no farther than that
I claim for myself and my fellow Catholics the
right to live according to our Holy Faith." ^

3 Briefe, p. 532.

CHAPTER XVI.
Ketteler's Socio-Political Program. 1873.

ON 10 March, 1873, Bismarck delivered his fam-
ous Kulturkampf speech in the Prussian
Hou&e of Lords. After proclaiming his divorce
from the Conservatives and his Liberal predilec-
tions, he attacked the Vatican and the Centre party
with a fierceness for which even the most enthus-
iastic Rome-haters were not prepared. He vented
his spieen especially on Ketteier, whom he regarded
as the author of the Centrist program and the most
active and zealous promoter of " Papal politics ".
"At what does this program aim?" he asked..
" Consult the writings of the Bishop of Mainz.
They are cleverly written, pleasant to read and in
everyone's hands. It aims at the introduction of a
political dualism into the Prussian State by setting
up a State within the State, by forcing the Catho-
lics to follow in public and private life the direc-
tions of the Centre party."

The work referred to by the Chancellor and the
tenor of which he distorted so shamelessly is Ket-
teler's third political brochure: The Catholics in
the German Empire: Draught of a Political Pro-
gram. From the introduction we learn that it
was written toward the close of the Franco- German
War, but that for political and other reasons its
publication was postponed tili the spring of 1873.
The original founders of the Centre party and the

204

BISHOP KETTELER.

framers of its program had no knowledge of its
Contents before the general public had. This dis-
poses of Bismarck's assertion as to the episcopal
authorship of the Soester Programm of 13 Decem-
ber, 1870. In a letter to the Germania, published
19 March, Ketteier replied to the Chancellor's other
calumnious declarations. " The best proof of the
arbitrary character of Prince Bismarck's estimate
of my program/' he said, " is the fact that, ever
since 1848, I have never claimed any more for the
Church in Germany than was granted to the Chris-
tian denominations by the Imperial Constitution of
Frankfort and the Prussian Constitution of 1850.
Not one word of mine can be adduced to the con-
trary. . . . Prince Bismarck has apparently no idea
whatever of the office and work of a Catholic
Bishop. He shows in his own person how hard it
is even for men of uncommon mental endowment
and experience of the world to rid themselves of
the narrowest sectarian prejudices. . . . " ^

The program itself, however, is the most crush-
ing answer to Bismarck's ravings about political
dualism and Papal intrigues. The Catholics,
though streams of Catholic blood had helped to bind
together the foundation stones of the new empire,
were calumniated as enemies of the empire {Reichs-
feinde), as ultramontanes, as spies of a foreign
power, as men without a country, ready to betray
the land of their birth to the French, the Pope, or
the Pole. Ketteier, who was in the eyes of the
Liberais the arch-ultramontane, intended his pro-
gram to be an answer to these accusations, a wit-

1 Quoted by Pfülf, III, p. 265.

SOCIAL REFORM. 20$

ness to the real aims and aspirations of the German
Catholics after the gieat war.^ " I doubt whether
any minority," he says, " has ever been treated more
inhumanly, more intolerantly, more unjustly by a
might-before-right majority than we Catholics
have been treated in the new German empire. All
this, however, shall not prevent us from loyally ful-
filling our duties toward the German empire and
doing all in our power to promote its welfare." ^

The State the Catholics had helped to make so
powerful had suddenly turned on them, bent on
crushing them; and yet they longed to place their
best efforts at its Service. But how could a perse-
cuted minority do positive, constructive, political,
and social work? Ketteier answered : Organize,
concentrate your forces, back up the assertion of
your rights with a strong political party ; when
the enemy shall have learned to respect you, he will
be ready to listen to your political and social reform
proposals.

In Ihe public life of our time only those are strong
who know what they want and how to get it. Numbers
without Organization are powerless ; but united even a
minority is strong. Our influence in the new German
empire will be exactly in proportion to our union and
Organization ; disunited we will become once more the
sport, the plaything of ovüc enemies, as we have so often
and for the same reason been in the past. If, there-
fore, the principles we have stood for until now are dear
to US, if we love the religion we profess, if we wish to
band on this priceless heritage to our posterity, if we
wish to keep a Christian fatherland, we must meet our

2 Die Katholiken im deutschen Reiche, 3rd edit., p. vii.

3 Op. cit., p. viii.

2o6 BISHOP KETTELER.

enemies with united forces. Every deputy whom we
send to the legislative assemblies, every Journal supported
by our money, must accept our program. We must or-
ganize in such a manner that every Catholic, whether
burgher or peasant, will be perfectly acquainted with our
demands and ready to Champion them boldly and reso-
lutely in his own particular sphere of activity. In this
way alone can we hope to gain the influence to which we
are entitled. But when I speak of a program for the
Catholics, I am f ar f rom thinking of a program intended
to represent exclusively Catholic interests. Every one
of my proposals proves the contrary. Whatever political
rights I Claim for the Catholics in the German empire,
I demand with equal candor for the other religious
bodies. The principles laid down by me can be ac-
cepted by all Protestants ; nay, they must be accepted by
all who advocate genuine equality before the law for
the various Christian denominations, and who do not
mean by religion a colorless undenominationalism, but
the Christian faith as historically and legally established
in Germany. There is nothing to prevent such a pro-
gram from becoming the program of all believing Chris-
tians, and I could call it a program for all right-minded
Christian men.*

A reproduction of the program will enable the
reader to form his own judgment on its significance,
on its all but prophetical character.

PROGRAM.

I. Unreserved recognition of the German imperial
power as at present legally constituted.
II. Firm national alliance with Austria, the German
Eastern Empire.^

* Op. cit., pp. 2-3.

^ The Alliance between Germany and Austria was made in 1878.

SOCIAL REFORM.

207

III. Honest recognition of the independence of the
Federate States without detriment to the necessary
unity of the Empire and to the imperial laws,

IV. In the Empire as well as in the separate States
the Christian Religion shall be the basis of all in-
stitutions connected with the exercise of religion,
without prejudice to religious liberty.®
V. The approved Christian bodies regulate and ad-
minister their own affairs independently and re-
main in possession of their religious, educational
and charitable institutions and funds.'^

VI. Guaranteed individual and corporative liberty in
contradistinction to the counterfeit liberty of ab-
solutism and liberalism.
VII. Liberty of higher, intermediate, and elementary
Instruction under State supervision regulated by
law, and Organization of the public schools not
according to the good pleasure of the State au-
thorities, but according to the real religious, in-
tellectual and moral condition of the people.^
VIII. Corporate Organization in contradistinction to the
mechanical constitutional forms of Liberalism;
self-government in contradistinction to bureau-
cracy pure and simple.

IX. In particular a territorial, provincial, and depart-
mental Constitution built up on these principles.
X. Amendments to the Imperial Constitution:

a. Creation of an Upper House.^

b. Creation of a Supreme Court as an unassail-
able bulwark of the entire German judiciary,

«This is Art. 14 of the Prussian Constitution of 1850.

"^ This is Art. 15 of the Prussian Constitution ; abrogated in
1873-

8 Cf. Art. 24 of the Prussian Constitution.
_ " Ketteier wants an Upper House composed of representa-
tives of the various classes — clergy, nobles, merchants, peasants,
workmen, etc.

2o8 BISHOP KETTELER.

as a bulwark of the public law of the land, and

as a legal check for the imperial and State ad-

ministrations.^"

XI, Regulation of the public debt, diminution of the

public burdens, proper adjustment of taxes. We

propose the f ollowing ameliorations :

a. Introduction of a stock exchange tax.^^

b. Introduction of an income tax for Joint stock
companies.^^

c. State management of railways.^'

d. Reduction of the war budget.

e. Exemption of the necessaries of life from
taxation.

XII. Corporate reorganization of the working-classes,
Legal protection of the children and wives of
workmen against the exploitation of capital.
Protection of the workman's strength by laws
regulating hours of labor and Sunday rest.
Legal protection of the health and morality of
work people in mines, factories, Workshops, etc.
Appointment of inspectors to watch over the
carrying out of the factory laws.
XIII. Prohibition of all secret societies, especially of
Freemasonry.^*

i<*This Court was created ii April, 1877, with its seat in
Leipsic.

1^ Stock Exchange taxation laws were passed in 1885, 1894,
1900, 1905.

12 Law of 27 July, 1885.

12 Realized at the end of the 'seventies.

^* " We do not demand," says Ketteier, " the suppression of
Freemasonry ; but we have a right to demand that it engage with
US, with open vizor, in fair combat under the general laws of
the State. Therefore we demand :

1. that the State prohibit all secret societies.

2. that, consequently, Freemasonry also must divest itself of
its secret character,

3. that all exceptional laws in favor of Freemasonry be abro-
gated, and that Freemasonry, like all other political parties, be

SOCIAL REFORM. 20Q

The Program is followed by brief but masterful
commentaries in which are embodied the results of
Ketteler's life-studies and social and political ex-
perience. Absorbingly interesting as they all are
— they have been called " a storehouse of political
wisdom " — we must confine ourselves to a short
analysis of the one on Article XII, which deals with
the Intervention of the State in the labor question.

The labor question [says the Bishop] cannot be omitted
from a reform program, because it is the most important
question of the day. But we shall consider it here only
in so far as the State is called upon to coöperate in its
Solution by means of legislation. The State has a two-
fold task to perform: to tender to the working-classes
the assistance of the law for the formation of corpora-
tions; to protect the workingman and his family by
legislative enactments against all unjust exploitation.

1. The working-classes have a right to demand from
the State that it give back to them what it deprived them
of, viz. a labor Constitution, regulated labor.

It is impossible to form a correct idea of the condi-
tion of the working-classes without taking into account
how far this condition is bound up with the defects and
evils with which modern society and the modern State are
affected. The labor question is only a branch of the
social question — the question that touches society in its
entirety. Hence all that we have said concerning the
dissolution and reorganization of society in general and
the constitutional regulation of the various social classes

placed_ under the surveillance of the ordinary administrative
authorities,

4. that the Government inspection of the lodges be exercised
only by such officials as are in no way connected with Free-
masonry." {Die Kath. im d. Reich, p. 115 s.) These demands
are as urgent to-day as they were forty years ago.

2IO BISHOP KETTELER.

on the basis of self-government, applies also to the work-
ing-classes.^^ The legal reorganization of the laboring
and artisan classes, if prudently carried out, will go far
toward solving the labor question.

The working- classes have passed through the same
phases as the old State and the old social order. The
Physiocrats of the last Century made the Organization
of labor responsible for all the economic evils of the
people, instead of looking for their true origin in its
degeneration, its egotistical ossification, in the patent
fact that this Organization had not been developed to
meet changed conditions. And so they annihilated the
grand Constitution of labor handed on to them by the
Middle Ages, instead of reforming it and incorpora-
ting with it all those portions of the toiling masses that
were still excluded from it. This demolition they called
restoration of the natural order — le gouvernement de la
nature. Organization of labor was in their eyes con-
trary to nature. They were confident that the destruc-
tion of the old Organization of labor and the Inaugura-
tion of their pretended order of nature would bring
about world-wide welfare and contentment among the
working-classes. They applied their so-called System of
nature with such fanaticism that the French National
Convention forbade the artisans to discuss their interests
in common, because they looked upon such a proceeding
as an obstacle to freedom of trade and of intercourse
between man and man, and as a revival of the guild
System. ^^ The politicians acted in exactly the same
manner in their province. Complete disorganization of
the State, of society, and of labor — the powers of the
State vested in a bureaucratic officialdom on the one

1'' See Art. VIII of the Program and the corresponding
commentary.

^ö Englaender, Geschichte der französ. Arbeit erassociationen,
I, pp. 17-20.

SOCIAL REFORM. 211

side, on the other, unbridled competition amongst the
people dissolved into isolated individuals under the sole
control of an absolute monarch or an equally absolute
National Assembly — this is the natural law of the Re-
volution. Such too is the spirit of Liberalism, not
merely the spirit of its economic teachings but also of
its politics and of its social theories. The tendency
of our times to retum to corporative forms, far from
being a product of Liberalism, is on the contrary a re-
action against the unnaturalness of its pretended natural
law. . . .

A first Step toward the reorganization of the work-
ing-classes was made by the Law of 4 July, 1868/' ' on
the juridical Status of industrial and agricultural asso-
ciations '. Economic Liberalism and industrial develop-
ment have reduced the workman and the handicrafts-
man to the condition of hired laborers. As wages form
part of the cost of production, the employer endeavors,
by the aid of competition, to lower wages as much as
possible, just as he tries to get any other wäre he has
need of at the lowest possible price. . . . The result of
this sale of work to the lowest bidder is that the wages
paid are as a rule sufficient to meet the needs of the day
and the hour, but give the laborer no guarantee whatever
for the future.

The new law allows the workman to combine with his
fellows for industrial purposes, and in this way affords
him a means of escape from the condition of a wage-
earner pure and simple. But only a small fraction of
the wage-earners are in a position to join such indus-
trial associations. Besides, the object of the law was
not the general Organization of the working-classes, but
merely the formation of isolated industrial associations;
it must be supplemented by new laws, if the working-

^'' Passed by the Norddeutsche Bund, extended to the whole
Empire in 1873, and superseded by the Law of I May, 1889.

212 BISHOP KETTELER.

classes are to enjoy a stable and secure existence for
the future.

2. In the second place, the workingman has a right to
demand from the State protection for himself, for his
f amily, for his work and health, against the superior f orce
with which capital endows its possessor. By satisfying
all the demands of economic Liberalism, the State has
not only made a hired laborer of the workingman, but
has also delivered him up, weak and defenceless, to the
mercy of the capitalist. Some maintain that the wives
and children of the workmen have need of the protection
of the law, but not the workingmen themselves, because
these are at liberty to fix the terms on which they will
let out their brawn and muscle, and because every legal
regulation of work would be equivalent to a restriction
on their personal liberty. This is as one-sided as to
say that coalitions alone are sufficient to safeguard the
liberty of the adult laborer when entering on an agree-
ment with his employer. These coalitions cannot supply
the place of a legal Organization, as is piain from the
numerous unsuccessful strikes and their deplorable con-
sequences, to say nothing of the fact that coalitions are
in themselves a Symptom of social disease. By wise
legislation the State can bring about the peaceful Or-
ganization of the working-classes, and it certainly has
no right to leave this result to be accomplished by a
long-drawn-out struggle between capital and labor. But
is the workman under the present system always at füll
liberty to enter on an equitable agreement with his em-
ployer? Certainly not. It may be so when the demand
for labor is very great ; but when the offer f ar exceeds
the demand, the workman is not free ; he must, on the
contrary, accept unconditionally the terms of the em-
ployer.

We possess a kind of legislation for the pro-
tection of workpeople, says Ketteier, in the Trade-

SOCIAL REFORM.

213

Law of 21 June, 1869. But the provisions of this
law, besides being altogether insufficient, are a dead
letter in most of the German States. Hence new
Protective Acts must be passed and a legal control
established to assure their observance.

The Trade- Law prohibited the employment of
children under twelve years in factories : Ketteier
wants the age of employment for children in fac-
tories and away from home to be raised to fourteen.
But even this age does not seem to him to be ad-
vanced enough, " as children of fourteen cannot do
without the pure atmosphere of the family and
have not yet acquired the moral strength necessary
to resist the influence of bad environment."

Married women must be forbidden to work in
factories or at other employment away from home.
Girls may be permitted to work in factories only
on condition that their Workshops are completely
separated from those of the men. " Unless the
Christian family is restored to the working-classes
all other remedies will be vain. But if the mother
is snatched from her sacred home duties and turned
into a wage-earning workwoman, there can be no
question of a Christian family. For the same rea-
sons we look on the employment of girls away from
home as in general deplorable."

The Trade-Law forbade the employment of
young people on Sundays and limited the working
day for lads of fourteen to sixteen years to ten
hours : Ketteier insists that work in factories and
other industrial concerns be prohibited on Sundays
and holidays and that the ten-hour day be extended
to all workpeople without exception. " But all

214

BISHOP KETTELER.

these laws will afford no efficacious protection to
the working-classes unless their observance is every-
where assured by legal control. Whether the best
means of control would be to appoint factory in-
spectors as is done in England, or to choose Super-
visors from among the workpeople themselves, as
some propose to do, or to combine both Systems,
is a question we do not venture to pronounce upon.
Whatever be the method adopted, however, the
control must be extended to moral and sanitary
conditions in the Workshops." ^*

" If this program had been carried out at the
time," writes Dr. Greiffenrath, " on his knees the
laborer would have thanked the Government. The
Social-Democratic movement was still in its begin-
nings and the cupidity of the masses was not yet
aroused ; all hearts went out in hope and confidence
to the new empire; Prussia still rested in the main
on its ancient foundations, it still had its Christian
schools and its Christian marriage laws." ^^

Ketteier did not deceive himself as to the recep-
tion his program would be likely to meet with even
amongst the Catholics.^" " We do not expect our
program to be accepted on the spot, or even in the
near future; our actions, however, are not governed
by the passing needs of the hour and the fluctua-
tions of the Zeitgeist, but by eternal principles, upon

18 Op. cit., pp. 79-94.

"^^ Ketteier u. die Soziale Frage, p. 12.

2^* The idea of the purely political character of the Centre
party (and, in consequence, of a political program for the same),
so strongly advocated by Ketteier, was still more or less foreign
to the ränge of thoughts of the average Catholic. (Cf. Ket-
teier, Die Centrums fraciion, pp. 14-17.)

SOCIAL REFORM. 215

which alone the peace and happiness of nations are
based and which, after seasons of revolutionary up-
heaval, always rise to the surface again." ^^

The time, however, when his reform proposals
were to be, in part at least, realized, was not so
far distant as the Bishop had supposed. In the
meantime, instead of the social reform so sorely
needed, Germany received the Kulturkampf.

2^ Die Katholiken im deutschen Reich, p. viii.

CHAPTER XVII.

The Kulturkampf. The Social Virtues and
THE DiviNE Law of Labor. 1873-1877.

THE Kulturkampf shows us Ketteier once more
at the füll height of his activity. Where
there was need of energetic defence of the Catholic
Position, where an attack was to be led against the
enemy's lines, where the faithful had to be enlight-
ened, warned, or encouraged, the Bishop of Mainz
was on the spot. He never held back to see whether
another would take the initiative. Thus he came
to be looked upon by friend and foe alike as the
real leader in the fight. His pamphlets, like Mal-
linckrodt's speeches, were devoured by hundreds of
thousands of enthusiastic readers. This exposed
Position invited the poisoned shafts of his adver-
saries ; it also drew toward him the loving vener-
ation and unfaltering trust of his fellow com-
batants. " In the ' best room ' of my father's house,
the piain old house with the gable-end in High
Street in Kreuznach," writes Johannes Mumbauer,
the latest editor of Ketteler's works, " there has
hung, ever since I can remember, a large glazed
and framed lithograph picture representing five
manly earnest faces : in the top row, August and
Peter Reichensperger; in the bottom row, Ludwig
Windthorst and Hermann von Mallinckrodt, and in
the centre, between these four, a Bishop with won-
derfuUy penetrating eyes, Wilhelm Emmanuel von

SOCIAL REFORM. 21 7

Ketteier; under the portraits these words are en-
graved : ' The Champions of Truth, Freedom and
Justice.' Many a time, in those dark and dismal
years when blind fanaticism had deprived my na-
tive town of regulär pastoral care, and when it was
left to the parents alone to implant in the youthful
heart love and fidelity to Holy Church, my father,
a man of simple, deep-rooted faith, to whom the
fortunes of the Church were his own, placed me be-
fore this picture and said to me: ' If the Catholic
Church is preserved to us in Germany, and if you
are able later on to practise your faith unmolested,
it is owing, after God, to these men, especially to
Bishop Ketteier.' I remember quite well what sor-
row feil on all of us when the word was passed
f rom mouth to mouth : ' The Bishop of Mainz is
dead.' And what the boy feit standing before that
picture and what he solemnly and with throbbing
heart promised his father, he could never forget :
' My unshaken devotion to the Church is insepar-
ably bound up with the name of Ketteier.' "

In their long night of trial the Bishop of Mainz
stood faithfully by his brother Bishops of Prussia.
He was present at all their historic meetings in
Fulda at the tomb of St. Boniface; all their " Pro
Memorias," Addresses, Pastorais, Petitions to the
king and the parliament bear his signature and not
a few of them were productions of his pen.

The expulsion of the Jesuits touched him to the
quick. He had invited them to Mainz, where they
had done excellent service in the pulpit, the press,
and the confessional, and now they were forced to
take up the exile's staff. In defence of their honor

2l8 BISHOP KETTELER.

and their rights he wrote one of his most populär
works : "The Imperial Law of 4 July, 1872, con-
cerning the Society of Jesus and the Regulations
for its Execution." From the pulpit of his cathe-
dral church he protested against the iniquitous
measure and commended clergy and people for their
publicly expressed disapprobation of it. Two years
later he defended the Jesuits against the silly ac-
cusation that their superiors can command what is
sinful.

Ketteler's Kulturkampf writings are an epitome
of the history and philosophy of the great religious
struggle in Germany. The first, dated February,
1873, "The Prussian Law on the Relation of the
Church to the State," ran through six editions in the
Space of a few weeks. Equally successful was the
illuminating brochure, published in the following
year, in which he subjected " the views of the
Prussian Minister of Worship, Herr Dr. Falk, on
the Catholic Church as expressed in his speech of
10 December, 1873," to a criticism nothing short of
annihilating. In the third, " The Breach of the
Religious Peace and the only way to its Restora-
tion " (1875), he showed that, whilst under the old
Empire the demand of the Protestant minority, that
the decisions of the majority should not be valid in
religious questions, was loyally acted upon by the
Catholic majority, now, on the contrary, the Pro-
testant majority arrogated to itself the right to de-
cide in matters touching the innermost life of the
Catholic Church. The only way to secure a last-
ing peace, he said, was to return to the old well-
approved principle of allowing each religious body

SOCIAL REFORM. 219

to regulate its own affairs. In 1876 he discussed
the question, " Why a Catholic cannot lend his au-
thority or influence to enforce the May Laws." The
last appeared in the spring of 1877. It bears the
title " The Introduction of Creedless Protestantism
into the Catholic Church."

On 23 April, 1875, the Grand-Duke of Hesse,
much against his will, for he was not only a good
man and well-disposed toward his Catholic subjects,
but also a great admirer of the Bishop of Mainz,
affixed his signature to the Hessian Kulturkampf
Laws, which were a faithful copy of the Prussian
May Laws. Then followed the darkest and saddest
days of Ketteler's life, illumined for a space by the
celebration of his silver episcopal jubilee, when the
Catholics of Germany vied with one another to do
him honor. " The amount of work done by the
Bishop during these distressful years, in the pulpit
and the confessional," says Baron von Hertling,
speaking from personal knowledge, " is simply in-
credible."

Ketteier had done all in his power to prevent the
passage of the odious law. As soon as its pro-
visions had been made public, he had sent an ener-
getic protest to the Ministry in Darmstadt. After
criticizing the Bill from the Standpoint of strict
justice, he examined it also on the side of liberty.
" The Catholic Church," he said, " can live and
work cheerfuUy and beneficently under all forms
of government, provided only they give her free-
dom. If the threat to separate the Church from
the State is carried out, the Church will sufTer great
material losses, and perhaps loss of souls too, but

220 BISHOP KETTELER.

if liberty is honestly granted to her in her various
spheres of action, especially in the sphere of edu-
cation and instruction, she will live and thrive. On
the other hand, under a System that robs her of
the freedom given to her by God, that makes of
her and her ministers mere tools of the secular
power, that renders the religious training even of
the clergy impossible, hinders the cultivation of
Catholic science, the development of the religious
life, the practice of Christian perfection, and that,
while pretending to respect her outward forms of
worship, degrades her and de-Catholicizes her
inner life — under such a System the Church can-
not thrive. She has to choose between gradual de-
cay in disgraceful self-abasement or martyrdom."

Without waiting for an answer to his protest
from the Ministry, Ketteier proceeded to attack the
Bill in a brochure entitled, " The Kulturkampf
against the Catholic Church in Hesse," in which
he arraigned the proposed measures before the
bar of history, justice, and common sense, and
proved them guilty on every count. A week after
its publication the Frankfurter Zeitung wrote:
" The first edition of Bishop Ketteler's latest work
on the Kulturkampf is already sold out; a second
edition is in the press — a clear proof of the im-
portance attached to the utterances of Wilhelm
Emmanuel by the Liberal party; a proof also of
the unanimity with which the Ultramontane forces
rally around their leader."

An audience with the Grand Duke was as ineflfec-
tual to stop the catastrophe as protests and pole-
mics. There was some consolation, however, in the

SOCIAL REFORM. 221

fact that Ludwig III had received him kindly as ever
and had brought the interview to a close with the
words : " I cannot for the moment rescind the
Church Laws, but ^t is my will that they be carried
out with the greatest possible consideration." The
conciliatory attitude of the Sovereign no doubt took
much of the sting out of the Hessian Kulturkampf,
but for all that the consequences were heartrending
enough.

Despite the ever-increasing pastoral labors how-
ever, despite the constant vexations on the part of
petty bureaucratic tyrants, the machinations of the
Old Catholics, the fines and threats of imprison-
ment, the bereavement of so many parishes, the
banishment of devoted nuns and brothers from the
schools and hospitals, the ruin of innumerable
works he had spent himself to rear and bring to
perfection, Ketteler's interest in the social question
never abated. With keen and penetrating glance
he followed every phase of its development. The
latest sociological works were always to be found
on his table, and on his journeys he invariably
carried such works with him. His secretary had
to collect and arrange all the important newspaper
articles dealing with the subject, no matter from
what point of view — Catholic, Protestant, Con-
servative, Liberal or Socialistic. Among his papers
Father Pfülf found numerous sketches with head-
ings such as the following: " Means to help the
Working Classes," " The Social Question a Stomach
Question," " The Black and the Red International,"
" Universal Direct Suflfrage," " Civil Marriage and
its Consequences for the Working Classes," " The

222 BISHOP KETTE LER.

Christian Woman. the Christian Mother, Christian
Children."

By a beautiful coincidence the last Pastorais
which the Bishop addressed to his flock (1876 and
1877) were " Social Pastorais." They are un-
doubtedly amongst the finest and maturest produc-
tions of his pen. " On my episcopal Visitation
tours last year," he begins the one for 1876, " I
often spoke to you on the relation of the Christian
virtues to the welfare of the people. We rightly
look on the Christian virtues as the road to Heaven ;
but perhaps we are not sufficiently alive to the fact
that they are also the right road to temporal happi-
ness, nay, that, for the generality of mankind, they
are the prerequisite conditions of prosperity here
below."

After explaining the true meaning of the term
" welfare of the people " as contained in the words
of Holy Writ: " Give me neither beggary, nor
riches: give me only the necessaries of life," ^ he
treats of the virtues of temperance, economy, and
chastity, to which he adds, as being of the high-
est importance for the public welfare, " the Chris-
tian choice of a State of life ". " Of all the re-
medies required to solve the so-called social ques-
tion," he says, " the first and most indispensable
by far is the promotion of family life. The philan-
thropist who does not see this is a fool and with
all his well or ill-meant remedies only beats the air."

The greatest of the social virtues, the virtue of
" Christian labor," he reserved for his next Pas-
toral, which is dated i February, 1877. " It is with

1 Prov. 30 : 8.

SOCIAL REFORM.

223

work," he writes, " as with other valuable things,
whose importance we overlook because they are
so common. What is more common than light?
Yet it is one of the most beneficent gifts of God,
which not only allows us to see the objects of the
created world, but also moves us to raise our
thoughts to the Source of Eternal Light and Truth.
What is more common than bread? Yet it is not
merely one of the necessary things of earthly life,
but also the real and true symbol of the spiritual
food that gives eternal life to the world. So too
there is something grand, something mysterious
about work. Revelation alone can teach us its true
significance."

He then proceeds to treat of labor as a " divine
law ", promulgated by God even before the Fall,
whose observance became painful only when im-
posed as a punishment for sin ; as a law for all
men, but directly and immediately laid on the male
portion of mankind ; as a law the observance of
which alone entitles us to eat, to enjoy the things
of earth. He next describes the manifold ways in
which this law is violated by men and women in
every Station in life and the sad consequences of
such transgressions. In conclusion he lays down
five " Christian labor rules " : — to work because it
is the will of God ; to combine work and prayer ; to
work willingly, honestly, and well ; to work with-
out complaining; to work in the state of grace; for
" just as the sap of the vine is communicated even
to the tiniest branches, so grace and benediction flow
out of the infinite fulness of the merits of Christ
to every drop of sweat that moistens the brow of
the Christian toiling in union with Jesus for God."

224 BISHOP KETTELER.

In the closing sentences Ketteier sums up the ex-
periences of his whole life in the field of social
thought and action. They read like his social
testament.

The most fatal error of our time is the delusion that
mankind can be made happy without Religion and
Christianity. There are certain truths which cling to-
gether like the links of a chain: they cannot be torn
asunder, because God has joined them. Among these
truths are the f ollowing : there is no true morality with-
out God, 110 right knowledge of God without Christ, no
real Christ without the Church. Where the Church is
not, there true knowledge of God perishes. Where true
knowledge of God is not, there morality succumbs in
the struggle with sin, with selfishness and sensuality,
with the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the
pride of life. But where morality is not, there is no
means left of making the people happy and prosperous.
In such a State men are ruled by their passions. They
are the slaves of the tyrants of avarice and lust, in whose
Service the powerful oppress the weak, and the weak, in
their turn, rise up against the powerful, and, if they con-
quer, become the willing tools of the seifsame tyrants —
their passions; war without end will be waged between
the rieh and the poor ; peace on earth among them is im-
possible. Intimately, inseparably is the welfare of the
people bound up with religion and morality. A per-
fectly just distribution of the goods of earth will never
take place, because God has intrusted the higher moral
Order to the free will of men, only a portion of whom
subject their wills to the will of God ; but in a truly
Christian nation the differences between the rieh and the
poor will always be adjusted in the best possible
manner.^ ,

2 Hirtenbriefe, p. 923.

CHAPTER XVIII.

The Christian Workman and the Socialistic
Labor Party. 1877.

IN the spring of 1877 Ketteier set to work on a
new social brochure, in which he proposed to
answer the question : Can a Catholic workman be a
member of the Socialistic Labor Party? The plan
had been sketched and a portion of the first part
had been twice recast when pressure of diocesaa
business and preparations for his approaching ad
limina visit to Roma forced him to Interrupt the
work; on his way home from the Eternal City
death overtook him. The fragment, which Father
Pfülf has preserved for us/ is of such paramount
importance for a füll understanding of Ketteler's
ideas on the labor question that we cannot refrain
from setting the greater part of it before the reader.
It begins:

New that the Socialistic Labor Party is daily growing
in numbers and in influence, every Catholic workingman
is confronted with the question: Can I be a member of
this party? Wherever he turns for work he is met by an
invitation to join its ranks. Therefore, if he wishes
to act as a conscientious and intelligent man, he must
be able to give a satisfactory answer to this question.
And not only the workingman, but every one who takes
a serious interest in the most important happenings of

1 Pfülf, III, pp. 293-302.

2 26 BISHOP KETTELER.

the day must be able to define bis position in regard to
this question.

I feel all the more called upon and in a measure
obliged to discuss it because a great change has come
over the labor movement since I wrote my first brochure :
Christianity and the Labor Question. By the fusion of
the two parties which were then struggling for su-
premacy — a fusion effected at Gotha, 25 May, 1875,
under the name of the Socialistic Labor Party and on
the basis of a common platform — the old associations
have not only gaineJ in numbers and consistency, but
have also in many respects altered their character com-
pletely. A movement national in character and confined
almost exclusively to Germany has given place to one
that embraces the workingmen of every land and is really
and truly international ; a movement whose chief aim
was the realization of certain practical reforms for
the amelioration of labor conditions has been suc-
ceeded by one that relegates practical reform proposals
to the background and aims at the transformation of
existing social conditions in regard to the acquisition
and distribution of wealth and at the Inauguration of
the so-called " Socialistic era ". Hence it would be un-
fair to apply to present conditions what I wrote in 1863.

But in Order to be able to answer the question,
whether a Catholic workman can join the Socialistic
Labor Party, ive must acquaint ourselves with the aims
and aspiratlons of this party. We must know what
the Socialistic Labor Party and the masses who adhere
to it really want. To dispel the prevailing ignorance
in this matter is the object of these lines.

To make bis answer to the proposed question as'
clear as possible, Ketteier divides the claims put
forward by the Socialists into three classes — ^such
as are perfectly legitimate; such as are only in

SOCIAL REFORM. 22/

part justifiable, and such as are unjust, bad, and
to be rejected. After warning his readers that only
those who stand on the solid foundation of Chris-
tianity will be able to follow him with profit in his
inquiry, he takes up the discussion of the legitimate
Claims of the labor party. " The platform, above
alluded to, of the Socialistic Labor Party," he says,
" treats of the practical demands of the German
workingmen in its last and shortest article. The
article in question begins with the words : ' The
Socialistic Labor Party of Germany demands, for
the tiine that the present social System lasts. . . .' "
Eight Claims are then enumerated.

The words, " for the time that the present social
System lasts ", as well as the place assigned to these
Claims, are characteristic. They give us to understand
that, in the eyes of the framers of the Socialistic plat-
form, these Claims are merely something incidental';
they will cease to be of any consequence as soon as
the Socialistic State becomes a reality ; and that this
new State, described in broad outline at the beginning
of the pro gram, is the true aim of the party. This
must be carefully borne in mind if we wish to form a
correct judgment on the actual tendencies of the So-
cialistic movement.

A natural consequence of this is that the labor claims
which could have been satisfied immediately have not
only been well-nigh pushed out of view, but have also
been very superficially formulated. The labor move-
ment, which, at bottom, is perfectly justified, is thus in
danger of becoming a sterile, revolutionary agitation.
There is great danger of its calling forth a reaction,
which will throw away the good together with the
bad and pay no attention even to legitimate demands.

228 BISHOP KETTELER.

There is danger too of the laboring masses becom-
ing the dupes of the leaders. If we were to take each
workman aside and ask him confidentially what he
thought would improve his condition, he would not talk
to US of vague transformations of society, but of prac-
tical demands analogous to those contained in the eight
points of the program. This would be the case all the
more surely because with these demands alone the labor
masses have been set in motion and with them the
labor leader still parades before the public. . . .

Ketteier ranges the legitimate claims of the Ger-
man workingmen under three heads — Organization
of the working classes, State support for working-
men's associations, legal protection of labor and of
the laborer against every kind of oppression.

Only the first of these demands is fully treated.
The line of argument is, in the main, the same as
that followed in Christianity and the Lahor Ques-
tion. Absolutism, the French Revolution, and
Liberalism, economic and political, were according
to Ketteier the progenitors of the labor question and
of Socialism. Socialism, he says, is right in de-
manding a reorganization of the laboring classes,
but wrong in thinking that the proposed Socialistic
State will answer the purpose.

The dissolution of the old organizations which had
Sprung up spontaneously within the natural classifica-
tions of the population, set in as soon as the State as-
pired to be the sole Organization and looked with jealous
eyes on all others within its domain. / This absolutistic
tendency commenced with the rise of absolute mon-
archies and has been handed down to us through the
French Revolution by the governments which have suc-

SOCIAL REFORM.

229

ceeded one another since then. The forms were dif-
ferent, but the principle that the State is all has never
changed. Modern Socialism is a legitimate child of
the same mother. In its labor State there is no room
for natural Organization, because it knows but one me-
chanical combination, which is itself. Hence it is not
really social, but anti-social, that is, instead of bring-
ing men together in a variety of groups, as nature pre-
scribes, it forces them all into one group, the State.
But this forced union is a union that does not unite
at all; one might just as well try to unite the pro-
ductions of nature by destroying the individuality of their
species and throwing them all together into one mould.
We should never succeed in uniting them, but simply
in depriving them of their living unity. It is the same
with men. They abhor uniformity as thoroughly as na-
ture does. But what are the living species among men
other than the various classes which they form of their
own accord in virtue of a natural law which arranges
all things in different groups, and which was evidently
established by God? . . .

No class has suffered more from the dissolution of
all natural organizations than the laboring class. No
class Stands so much in need of what human organi-
zations give to man — help and protection. The help
and protection given to man by Organization enable
him to develop his whole personality, to make füll use
of the powers and faculties within him. . . He who
has wealth finds help and protection in his wealth. On
the other band, he who has neither money nor position
in the world finds help and protection only in the
Society of such of his fellow men as are similarly cir-
cumstanced. In the State alone he will not find the
help and protection necessary for the satisfaction of his
thousand daily wants. Out of this State of Isolation all
the material evils with which the laboring classes are

230

BISHOP KETTELER.

afflicted have arisen. . . . Fully alive to his own help-
lessness, the workman is only too ready to join any and
every movement that promises to help him, and to throw
himself into the arms of every fool or lying demagogue. .

To organize the laboring classes on a constitutional
basis is therefore the grand task to be accomplished.
A giant task indeed and one which, I am afraid, our age
is not prepared to midertake successfully. Its efforts
will have to be limited to the collection of materials for
the future edifice.

To insure any degree of real and lasting success
every attempt to reorganize the laboring classes must
be based on the following principles:

(1) The desired organizations must be of natural
growth {naturwüchsig), that is, they must grow out of
the nature of things, out of the character of the people
and its faith, as did the guilds of the Middle Ages.

(2) They must have an economic purpose and not
subserve the intrigues and idle dreams of politicians and
the fanaticism of the enemies of religion. The Social-
ist Labor Party has avoided neither the one nor the
other of these rocks.

(3) They must have a moral basis v^^ith the conscious-
ness of class-honor, class-responsibility, etc.

(4) They must comprise all the indiviJuals of the
same class.

(5) Self-government and control must be combined
in due proportion.

These are the prerequisite conditions for a reorgani-
zation of the working-classes. As long as the spirit of
Liberalism with its hostility to the Church, the institu-
tion in which the great moral forces of humanity find
their sustenance, predominates, it will not succeed. If,
on the contrary, Church and State lived on good terms
and helped each other, there could be no question of
failure.

SOCIAL REFORM. 23 I

After briefly passing in review the efforts thus
far made to organize the working-classes — co-
operative and productive associations, the various
associations bearing the name of Schulze-Delitzsch
and the trade-unions ^ — Ketteier passes on to the
consideration of the other legitimate claims of the
Socialists; but Father Pfülf was able to find only
some fragmentary notes written in pencil and al-
most illegible. As they present nothing new we
pass them over.

In the second part Ketteier evidentiy intended
to treat of the Socialistic conception of labor as ex-
pressed in the first article of the Gotha platform,
for he jotted down a remark to the effect that the
Labor Party is right in endeavoring to restore to
labor its true value and dignity, but that it wants
to attain this end by unjustifiable means — the
forcible distribution of wealth.

In the third part Ketteier explains in piain and
simple language the general principle on which
CoUectivism, or Marxian Socialism, is based, viz.
that private ownership must be confined to objects
of enjoyment {consumption goods), whilst all
means of production {production goods) are to be
owned and worked by the State, and in conclusion
points to the last and deepest reason why every
self-dependent, liberty-loving man must oppo'se,
with every fibre of his being, the destruction of
simple property. " Even if all the Utopian dreams
of the Socialists were realized," he says, " and
every one was fed to his heart's content in this uni-

2 See the concluding paragraphs of Chapter IX of the present
work.

232

BISHOP KETTELER.

Versal labor State, I should, for all that, perfer to
eat in peace the potatoes that I grow myself, and to
clothe myself with the skins of animals reared by
me, and be free — than to live in the slavery of the
labor State and fare sumptuously. This makes the
Collective theory so utterly detestable. Slavery
come to life again; the State an assemblage of slaves
without personal liberty. . . . Profound miscon-
ception of the evil that is in all men ! He alone
can lend a helping band who is able to vanquish
evil within and around him." ^

Ketteier had just begun bis last Confirmation
tour, 14 April, 1877, when the foUowing letter
reached him from Augsburgs

In the name of the Christian Workingmen's Associa-
tion of Augsburg, the undersigned express to Your
Lordship their deepest veneration and at the same time
their most heartfelt thanks for the warm sympathy Your
Lordship has on so many occasions manifested for the
interests of the working-classes. . . .

The Bishop replied, under date of i May, 1877:

Your friendly appreciation of my endeavors has
touched me deeply. I was especially rejoiced to find
in your letter a proof that you and the members of the
Association seek to realize the aims and aspirations of

3 This thought frequently recurs in Ketteler's writings. He
jotted down the following remark on the fly-leaf of a book :
" Two ideas are wanting to our contemporaries : (i) The idea of
evil in odl man. The man of our days knows evil only as an
isolated phenomenon, and that in others ; not, however, the evil
that is in all men, not hereditary evil. All his calculations are
false, because he does not take this factor into account. (2) The
idea of Divine Assistance. He knows only self-help."

cq

'- C -r Sä

- ^"^ o

a ^

c o o

SOCIAL REFORM. 233

the working-classes only in the dosest rniion with Re-
ligion and with Christ. It is the only true way.*

These were Ketteler's last words on the social
question — a faithful echo of his first words on the
same question spoken twenty-nine years before over
the dead bodies of Auerswald and Lichnowski,
" With Christ, in the Truth which He taught, on
the Way which He pointed out, we can make a
paradise of earth, we can wipe away the tears from
the eyes of our suffering brother, we can establish
the reign of love, of harmony and f raternity, of true
humanity."

Last Visit to Rome and Death. 1877.

On the Feast of the Patronage of St. Joseph, 21
April, 1877, Ketteier addressed a Pastoral Letter
to his flock on the approaching episcopal jubilee of
the Holy Father and the manner in which they
ought to celebrate it. " The fifty years that have
elapsed since the episcopal consecration of our Holy
Father," he wrote, " were not years of rest and
peace, but years of uninterrupted heavy cares, trials
and labors, years of conflict and suffering. Except-
ing a martyr's death, what has he not suffered?
And now he has passed the age allotted to man;
but his cares also, and his struggles and sufferings
have reached their culmination." In conclusion he
exhorts the faithful to pray for the common Father
of Christendom " so humbly, so trustingly, and with
hearts so pure " that their prayers must be heard.'

* Briefe, p. 536 s.

^ Hirtenbriefe, p. 925.

234 BISHOP KETTELE R.

The Bishop was determined to represent his
diocese in person. He had, it is true, repeatedly
visited the Eternal City, but Pio Nono's days were
drawing to a close and he wished to take leave of
him, little suspecting that his own end was so near.
He arrived in Rome on 1 1 May and took up his
residence in the Anima. " I cannot teil you," he
Said to the Rector on their first walk to St. Peter's,
" how happy I feel when I am in Rome." ® The
holy places had always had a great attraction for
him, but he had never visited them with such rev-
erential love before. Beads in hand, he went
from church to church, from shrine to shrine. He
could be Seen praying for hours at a time at the
tombs of the Apostles or in his favorite church of
St. Augustine. On 13 May he preached in the
Anima and on 16 May at a meeting of the German
and Austrian pilgrims in the Palazzo Altemps; they
were his last public speeches. His last printed word
was a brilliant refutation in the Germania of a
number of misrepresentations relative to his Roman
visit disseminated by the Liberal Kölnische Zeitung.

On 17 May the German pilgrims, a thousand
strong, with seven bishops and a great number of
noblemen at their head, were assembled in the
spacious Sala Ducale for their audience with the
Pope. Not wishing to tax the aged Pontiff's time
and strength unnecessarily, Ketteier had not asked
for a private audience but merely sent in his name

* To a priest who was fond of dilating on his visit to London
and the wonders of the Crystal Palace Ketteier remarked : " My
dear friend, the next time you undertake an extended trip, go
to Rome. Rome is the London of priests."

SOCIAL REFORM.

235

with the rest of the pilgrims from Mainz. Shortly
after twelve o'clock the Pope was carried into the
hall and took his place on the throne. After the
Latin address had been read by the banished Arch-
bishop of Cologne, the leaders of the various depu-
tations advanced. When the jubilee gift of the
diocese of Mainz was about to be presented and the
Word " Mainz " Struck the ears of the Pope, he said
in a loud voice: " But where is the Bishop of
Mainz ?" Told that the Bishop was present but
Standing somewhat back, he called out repeatedly :
" Ketteier! Ketteier!" The Bishop had to step for-
ward, and whilst he bent down to kiss the Pope's
extended hand, his Holiness expressed his joy at
seeing him again. "Ah, Ketteier, Ketteier," he
said over and over again, and kept him by his side
during the rest of the audience.

After the audience the Cardinais, the Bishops
and other prominent visitors were entertained by
the Pope in the rooms of the Vatican Library.
His Holiness had, as usual, a kind and cheering
Word for everybody, but Ketteier was again the
object of his special attention. How well he re-
membered the time, he said, when he nominated
Ketteier to the see of Mainz. He was in Gaeta at
the time, and when the list with the three names,
Provost Ketteler's at the head, was presented to
him, one of the Cardinais present had remarked :
" Ketteier is known throughout Germany as an ex-
cellent priest; everybody speaks well of him; Your
Holiness can depend on him." The Pope then
spoke of the Bishop's labors in his diocese and of
his many battles with the enemies of the Church,

236

BISHOP KETTELER.

" Tu aliquando proeliabaris proelia regis," he
added, alluding to Ketteler's career, "nunc proe-
liaris proelia Dei." " Sequimur exemplum Sancti-
tatis Vestrae," Ketteier replied. With the ex-
quisite compliment : " You wield a good pen, my
son," the Pope brought the conversation to a close.
On the evening of the same day Ketteier was sum-
moned to a private audience with the Holy Father,
who was " all affection and benevolence ", as the
Bishop afterward remarked. Thus closed one of
the proudest and happiest days of Ketteler's life.
It had scattered to the winds all the idle or mali-
cious newspaper gossip about the supposed strained
relations between Mainz and Rome, since the days
of the Vatican Council.

On the evening of the third of June Ketteier bade
adieu to the beloved City on the Seven Hills. He
was impatient to be back in the midst of his chil-
dren. There was so much still to do while it was
day. After a short stop-over at Meran and at
Innsbruck, he traveled on to Altoetting, in Bavaria,
whence he intended to pay a visit to an old friend
of his, Baron Clemens von Korff, who had just en-
tered the Capuchin novitiate in Burghausen. At
the Shrine of Our Lady of Altoetting, where the
will of God in his regard had been made manifest
to him thirty-seven years before, he offered up the
Holy Sacrifice for the last time. On the way from
Altoetting to Burghausen the fever which he had
contracted in Italy and which his iron Constitution
and his indomitable will had until then successfully
resisted, broke out in the worst form of typhoid.
He arrived at the monastery " tired unto death ",

SOCIAL REFORM. 237

as he told the Father Provincial, and asked for a
bed.

In the circle of his friends Ketteier had often ex-
pressed the wish to be able to retire to the solitude
of some cloister to prepare for death. His wish
was unexpectedly realized. For thirty-three days
the fever burned and raged and shook the giant
frame of the sufferer like a reed, but it could not
break his spirit or cloud his intellect. " To will
what God wills is Heaven on earth " — this favorite
maxim of his mother he had made his own in life
and he remained faithful to it in death. When one
of his friends expressed the hope that God would
grant him life and health again, " No," he replied,
" Death is standing at the door. God's holy will
be done."

On the thirteenth of June, at 9 o'clock in the
morning, shortly after having received Holy Com-
munion and while the monks were reciting the
prayers for the dying, he expired in the peace of
the Lord, without a struggle, without a sigh, the
cross in his right-hand, his eyes raised to Heaven,
his lips parted in prayer — the band of death had
not disturbed the imposing calm and majesty of his
dying hours.^

When the great Bishop died, the affliction of the
Church in Germany was just entering upon its
acutest stage; not even the faintest ray of light
gave promise of better days to come. Thousands

■^ For an account of Ketteler's sickness and death see Liesen,
Letzte Lebenswochen des hochsei. Bischofs von Mainz. Also
Pfülf, III, pp. 315 ff. and Dr. Heinrich's funeral oration in
Schleiniger' s Muster des Predigers, pp. 897 ff.

238

BISHOP KETTELER

of parishes were without pastors and there was
hardly a bishop left in Prussia. Ketteler's de-
position and banishment had long been planned;
his enemies were only waiting a favorable oppor-
tunity for decisive action.* But God in His infinite
love and mercy took him away before this heaviest
blow of all, which would have broken his episcopal
heart, descended upon him. " If he continue to
live, he shall leave a name above a thousand, and
if he rest soon, it shall also he to his advantage^ ®

In his testament Ketteier intimated that he should
like to be buried in the Lady Chapel of his cathe-
dral church. " I do not mean to say," he added,
" that I am worthy of such an honor, or that I was
a good dient of the Mother of God. All I can say
is that I always had the desire to be one." Here
accordingly he was laid to rest on the eighteenth
of July, all Mainz and thirty thousand strangers
assisting at the funeral.

Five years later a beautiful monument arose over
his tomb. A stone slab resting on six low columns
bears the life-size figure of the Bishop in alto-
relievo of the finest Carrara marble. A baldachin
of white sandstone, let into the wall, forms the
background. The Bishop is clad in his pontifical
vestments, in his left-hand he holds the crozier, in
his right, the Book of the Gospels; a lion is couched
at his feet. The Latin inscription teils the visitor
that " Wilhelm Emmanuel, Freiherr von Ketteier,
for twenty-seven years Bishop of the Church of

^ Twice Warrants for Ketteler's arrest had been issued, but
both were recalled, or any rate never carried out.
^ Ecclus. 39 : 15.

SOCIAL REFORM.

239

Mainz, a man mighty in his words and deeds, rests
here in expectation of the resurrection."

There are always fresh flowers on the tomb,
placed there by the mothers and daughters of Mainz
as a tribute of gratitude to the eloquent champion
of the Christian family.

" Oltre il rogo non vive ira nemica." When the
voice of the " fighting Bishop " was hushed and
his pen, which the Vicar of Christ had pronounced
to be good, had been laid aside forever, friends and
foes at home and abroad united in offering a sin-
cere tribute of admiration to the rare consistency
of his character, to tlie magic of his personality,
to his unswerving devotion to his ideals, to his love
of justice and his hatred of iniquity. " The fight-
ing Bishop, who sat on the throne of Willigis for
more than a quarter of a Century," the Frankfurter
Zeitung wrote on receiving the news of Ketteler's
death, " is a silent corpse. The Ecclesia militans
Stands at the bier of one of her leaders whose loss
she will not easily forget and whose place she will
long seek in vain to fiU. Well may they hang their
flags at half-mast and chant funeral hymns, they
who have lost him. And if the greatness of their
loss has not already come home to them, if they
did not experience it in the days when they
trembled for his life, they will realize it when, as
the battie proceeds, this warrior of indomitable will
and Piercing vision shall be missing from the lines.
Germany had had few bishops who can compare
in knowledge and practical wisdom with this West-
phalian nobleman." Of all the eulogies bestowed
on him that of our gloriously reigning Pontiff is

240

BISHOP KETTELER.

the most beautiful by far. " We were rejoiced to
hear," he wrote 12 July, 191 1, to the president of
the committee charged with the preparations for
the commemoration of the centenary of Ketteler's
birth, " that not merely the Citizens of Mainz, but
the Catholics of all Germany, were anxious to do
honor to his memory with thankful hearts, knowing
as they do with what enthusiastic ardor he ever
defended the right of religion and of the Apos-
tolic See; with what wisdom he expounded the
Christian teachings, especially on the social ques-
tion, for whose Solution, as he showed so con-
clusively, the Catholic Church offers such marvel-
ously efficacious and salutary remedies ; with what
zeal he championed the cause of the men and wo-
men whose lot in lif e is daily toil ; knowing also
what glory his splendid words and deeds shed on
the city whose bishop he was. We welcome the ap-
proaching celebration all the more joyfully because
we entertain the firm hope that the memory of such
a beloved pastor, and the illuminating example of
his works will inspire the congressists to adopt re-
solutions corresponding to the needs of the times
and to renew their ardor in the practice and de-
fence of religion." ^"

1*^ Official Report of the 58 Katholikentag, Mainz, 6-10 August,
191 1. For Latin text see Acta Apost. Sedis, Vol. III, no. 14,
p. 521-

CHAPTER XIX.

" The Great Teacher, though Dead, yet
Speaks."

^i\\THEN death surprised Ketteier," says
V V Goyau, " the German Centre, the Catho-
lics of Germany, possessed, thanks to him, a social
doctrine and a social platform." ^ He could have
added : And the social reforms demanded by Ket-
teier have been for the most part realized.

We have seen how the hands of the Catholic rep-
resentatives in the German parliament were tied by
the Kulturkampf. The Liberais had an overwhelm-
ing majority in the Imperial Diet and in the vari-
ous State Legislatures, and every bill brought in
by the Centre, no matter what its nature might be,
was a prior; doomed to be voted down. The legis-
lative mills were so busy turning out anti-Catholic
laws that there was no time for social work, even
if the Government had been minded — which it was
not — ^to promote it.

As soon, however, as an opening appeared, the
Centre came forward with a Labor Protection Bill,
19 March, 1877. It was the first bill of the kind
ever placed on the table of the Reichstag ^ and bore
the name of Count Ferdinand von Galen, a nephew
of Bishop Ketteier. In scope it was identical with

^ Goyau, Ketteier, p. xlvii.

2 The first Social-Democratic Labor Bill was introduced on
II April, 1877.

242

BISHOP KETTELER.

Art. XII of Ketteler's socio-political program. The
debate showed how woefuUy behind the times the
Liberais and so-called Progressists were in regard
to the social question. One Liberal, a certain Herr
Rickert, frankly admitted that the whole Bill was
as a sealed book to him ; that he could not see what
" the Christian social order of the world " had
to do with factory legislation. To another it looked
like " a chapter from some medieval chronicle, a
story of Franks and Burgundians." Bebel wanted
to know " whether the Christian social order of the
World dated from the time when Gregory VII ruled
supreme, or when Leo X squandered indulgence
money in Rome; from the Peasant War, or from
that epoch of Christianity when the first Christians
lived a communistic life?" Lasker called the Bill
" a piece of foUy ", and Secretary of State Hoff-
man regarded it as a " provocation of the Govern-
ment, as a serious attack on the economic policy
heretofore pursued by the Chancellor." The same
statesman was at a loss to know where, in a rational
factory law, a place could be found for the demand
for rest on Sundays and Feast Days. For these
and other equally weighty reasons he asked that the
Bill be killed then and there without doing it the
honor of committing it. As the majority of the
House did not think it advisable to quash in so
brutal a manner a Bill behind which stood loo rep-
resentatives of the people, this Suggestion was not
acted on. The Bill was accordingly referred to a
committee of 21 members — 10 Liberais, 10 Con-
servatives and Centrists, and one Socialist. The
ten Liberais and the solitary Socialist succeeded

SOCIAL REFORM.

243

in burying it, not however before the Liberal and
Socialist press and the comic sheets had pounced
upon it and its author, whom they called " the
Apocalyptic Count ", as a welcome subject for cheap
sati re.

And what did Bismarck think of the Galen Bill?
On 10 August, 1877, he wrote to the Minister of
Commerce that in his opinion legislation for the
protection of the workingman's health, for the pro-
tection of youth, for the Separation of the sexes,
for the keeping of the Lord's day, for the appoint-
ment of factory inspectors, would not restore peace
between the employer and the employees ; every
limitation put on the conduct of a factory would
on the contrary merely diminish the wage-paying
capacity of the employer, and certainly handicap
Germany in the race for the world-market.^

The parliament which had treated the first Chris-
tian Labor Bill with such supreme disdain was dis-
solved II July, 1878. At the general elections
which followed, the Liberais lost 29 seats and the
Progressists 9, while the Centre was returned the
strongest party with 103 members, ten of whom
were Protestant " guests ". A Conserv^ative was
chosen president and a Centrist, Baron von Franck-
enstein, vice-president, of the next Reichstag. On
I July, 1879, Dr. Falk was dimissed from the Min-
istry of Worship and in the same month the Gov-
ernment made the first overtures to Windthorst.
The ship was being gradually cleared for action.

On 17 November, 1881, William I sent the fam-
ous message, known as " the great message ", to

3 See Germania, 30 July, iqil (No. 172).

244

BISHOP KETTELER.

the Reichstag, in which the Government made its
own the demand for social reform and inaugurated
the era of workmen's insurance. This is not the
place to discuss the merits and the weak points of
the insurance laws enacted between 1883 and 1889.*
They are stamped with the stamp of Bismarck:
overrating of the mechanical forces of the State
and underrating of the ethical forces of human na-
ture. Materialist as he was, the Iron Chancellor
flattered himself that he could solve the labor
question with money and kill Socialism with a
watchman's club.^ Hence his persistent Opposition
to the reform proposals of the Centre party, which
even the ruinous strikes in the Rhenish-West-
phalian coal regions at the end of the 'eighties could
not make him abandon. The ship had evidently
to be cleared again.

On 4 February, 1890, William II inform ed
Prince Bismarck and the Minister of Public Works
that he was determined to continue the work begun
by his grandfather and to secure further protec-
tion to the economically weaker classes of his people
by the application of the principles of Christian
morality. The Chancellor was directed to take the
necessary preliminary steps for the holding of an
International Labor Conference in Berlin.

* The sickness insurance law was passed 15 July, 1883; the
accident insurance law 6 July, 1884; and the old age and in-
firmity insurance law 22 June, 1889.

^ The Anti-Socialist Law was passed 19 October, 1878, against
the Votes of the Centre, the Alsatians, the Poles, and some in-
dependent groups. It proved a complete fiasco. It feil with its
father Bismarck. " When Bismarck thought he had driven out
Beelzebub by the Socialist Law," the Frankfurter Zeitung wrote
in 1904 (No. 105), "he came back with three million devils."

SOCIAL REFORM.

245

The Conference was still in session when Bis-
marck was dismissed from office (20 March). The
labor question was the rock upon which he finally
split. The general elections, with social reform
as the main issue, had broken up his bloc majority.

The greater part of the speech from the throne
at the opening of the Reichstag on 6 May was de-
voted to labor-protective legislation, and the Em-
peror expressed the firm hope that salutary laws
would, with the help of God, be enacted without
unnecessary delay. Thus urged on, the legislators
went about their task with energy and good will.
The Liberais and Progressists, that is, what was left
of their once mighty phalanx, all but openly apol-
ogized for their unmannerly behavior toward Count
Galen. Things had changed since then, they said,
and, as His Majesty had spoken, it was their duty
to foUow his directions. And so, on i June, 1891,
after fifteen years of almost uninterrupted parlia-
mentary struggle, in which the greatest statesmen
and political economists of the age were engaged,
the incubus of Liberal industrialism was lifted from
the workpeople of Germany and Ketteler's social
reform program received the sanction of law."

But it was to receive a higher sanction still. If
we wish to test Ketteler's fidelity to the true tradi-

^ The Socialists voted against the Labor Protection Law. lu
his excellent work, Germany and th? Germans, Vol. II, p. 353,
Dawson pays a well-deserved tribute to the men who carried
Ketteler's program through the Reichstag. The higher interests
of the laboring classes, he says, never had sincerer defenders than
the Catholic representatives, who, more than any other party,
stood up for factory legislation, for Sunday rest, for prohibition
of work to children under a certain age and of night-work to
women and for workpeople's Insurance.

246

BISHOP KETTELER.

tions of the Church on the social question, we need
only turn over the pages of the encyclical Rerum
Novarum. " The Pontifical authority, believing
the moment come for giving the right direction to
the Catholic social movement, confirmed point by
point the teachings of the Bishop." ^

The men who fought the great battles for the
protection of the workingman and his family were
animated by Ketteler's spirit. The Catholic Con-
gress of Mainz and the celebrations held in a
thousand cities, towns, and villages of Germany to
commemorate the hundredth anniversary of Ket-
teler's birth, proclaimed to all the world that his
spirit is abroad to-day more than ever. In the
Centre Party, whose destinies he helped to shape, in
the Volksverein with its seven hundred thousand
members, in the Christian Labor Syndicates, in
the Catholic Workingmen's Associations, in the
Artisans' Guilds, in the innumerable other profes-
sional organizations, which are spread like a net-
work over the length and breadth of Germany, the
spirit of Ketteier still lives and " the great teacher,
though dead, yet speaks."

'' E. de Girard, Ketteier et la question ouvriere, last chapter.

Date Due

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